I often wondered if many hobby interludes were affected directly by 9/11.

It stands to reason that the hotel you mentioned could have had many couples in it at the time.

I hope they all made it out alive, at least.

Thank you for sharing this.

                                    9/11 and ME—A TRUE STORY

    I am getting a little sick and tired of the commercial television’s fixation with the 9/11 tragedy. They started a week back and they are going whole hog by now. Their programs do not annoy me per se; but in a very personal way I am upset when I see or hear how the towers came a tumbling down, as if they were the walls of Jericho. The reason I have this problem is because I was there just before towers fell.
That summer, I had made several trips for a case I was working on that involved the Wall Street firm of Cantor Fitzgerald. And when I say that I was there, I mean right there, right between the towers in what we, my Brazilian mistress, who was the motivation for continual return trips, used to call “our little hotel,” the diminutive Hilton that grew in the footprints of the two big structures. I think it was only six or seven stories high but had its own parking lot right off the west side exit.

    I had to confer several times with brokers in the Cantor Fitzgerald brokerage company, which sat on the top floor of the tower. And the whole firm was entirely wiped out, in fact the current president of the firm only survived because he was late to work for the reason of taking his son to private school that very morning. I flew out of JFK a week before the tumble and I was due back the day after the airships were driven into the towers, like darts at a drunken dart board contest. You never hear about our little hotel, but the towers fell right on it and smashed it to a pulp. My beautiful Brazilian mistress, who made my trips to New York so well worth the effort, was so terrorized she fled New York and surfaced in Zurich, where she still doesn’t feel that safe. I remember the last meal we had in a Brazilian restaurant, when the waiter brought around a plate of pickled garlic that he thought would go well with the barbequed skewered meats, and after jammering away in Portuguese with my beloved, which truly is the language of love, he asked me if I wanted to try the garlic. And I answered truthfully, “Not before I make love to this beautiful lady,” and every one laughed including the table nearby that over heard and my darling blushed deep red under her sun tan.

    So I lost my little hotel and my girl all because some bearded son of a bitch decided to try a sneak attack on America, and boy was he lucky in pulling it off. I also lost a handful of friends who I was working with at the Cantor Fitz Company, and records that turned to ash destroying a case that was several years in the making.
I don’t cry for lost love or lost profit, but when the TV screen fills up with scenes of 9/11 I shed more than a silent tear for all the people I knew who went down with that colossus, and I feel a little guilty that I wasn’t there to help them in some way, if only in solidarity.

I remember that Hilton hotel being buried in the rubble.  It certainly brings more clarity to the tragedy when you have a personal connection.  Cantor Fitzgerald was completely wiped off the face of the earth, as were many other businesses.  You can't just put something like that behind you, and I'm sorry you lost some friends.

I had an experience where I missed being the victim of a terrorist bomb by about 90 seconds.  I don't want to get too specific because it could identify me, but I was traveling overseas and my boss and I took a cab to the airport, ready to fly home.  The cabbie stopped at the curb in front of the terminal, and in true cabbie fashion, sat there and did nothing while me and my boss struggled to pull our luggage out of the undersized trunk of this piece of shit subcompact car they were using as cabs in that country.

I leaned my suitcase against a trash can right next to the terminal door, and went back to help my boss get his bags.  We both walked inside and went through two sets of double doors and walked about 100 feet to the ticket counter at the back of the terminal.  Within 30 seconds of getting in line, an explosion went off and just moments after that, about 10 soldiers with machine guns went running past us to the street.  In this country, the military was always stationed at potential targets.  We still didn't know it was a bomb.

After we got our tickets we went back to see what had happened.  It turned out the trash can I'd leaned my suitcase against had a terrorist bomb in it.  Three innocent people were killed for no reason other than they were trying to catch a flight.  Six or seven others were injured.  It could have easily been me and my boss, and If we'd hit one more red light on the way to the airport, it would have been.

There's little solace in saying it just wasn't my time, and there's no way to ever come to grips with events like these.  We can drive ourselves crazy trying and spend the rest of lives running scared.  After all, that's the intent of terrorism- to terrorize and destroy civil society.  Society as a whole may move on, but for the individuals involved, life will never be the same.

I was just getting into the hobby 10 years ago- had a lot of travel for work in a regular route, so was in same city on a regular basis, and thought it would be cool to cultivate a realtionship (professional, of course) with a provider that would be a regular thing- anyway, I contacted this gal on Monday 9-10, and we scheduled out appt for the following morning at 800; we were in the midst of our morning exercise as the towers were coming down (we were not anywhere near NYC) and I didnt' know about it until I was driving away to my first appointment of the day- my emotions were mixed to say the least.  Well, the gal I was with and I ended up making it a regular thing and I ended up seeing her almost monthly for about 5 years- then another job change and a new route, so on to new cities and new people, but we have always stayed in touch- funny how being together with someone at a time like that will bond you together.

I had a favorite down in Florida flying up to meet me in Boston later that day.

I found out about 9/11 of course while at work and totally forgot about her in the heat of the situation.  A short time later she called my cell phone to say that she was on the tarmac in Florida, but was being told that they have to wait and that the flight might be cancelled for "security reasons".  She asked me if I knew what was going on, so I told her.  She was so shocked she started crying right there on the phone with me.  (She is quite a high strung person.)

With planes being grounded and all, it was over a week until she could make it up to Boston.  The situation definately had an effect on our relationship, but it is hard to say if it was for the good or bad.