I think I speak for a lot of women when I say that when you’re eight months pregnant, all you want to do is sleep.
And when you work the hours that I was working on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, you dream about sleep.
At the time, I was an anchor at CNBC working a split shift. I would get up at 3 a.m. ET, anchor the 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. premarket show, go home at 7:30 a.m., try to sleep for a few hours, then return to the studio in Ft. Lee, New Jersey, to anchor the 4 p.m. market wrap-up broadcast. Insane hours, I know.
But about a year earlier, when I was only helming the early morning gig, I jumped at the offer to reach a broader audience in the afternoon. The catch was that I could only have the 4 p.m. if I continued to work the pre-dawn show as well.
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Just getting used to the crazy sleep schedule was hard enough, but when I got pregnant with my first child, it quickly became way more difficult. But I gamely plowed ahead. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was a month and a few weeks from giving birth.
After finishing the morning show on that sparkling September day, I headed home, lumbered into my apartment in Edgewater, New Jersey, right on the Hudson River, just a town away from the studio, closed the blackout curtains and was just drifting off when my then-husband, a senior producer at MSNBC, called me. “Turn on Channel 4,” he said. He sounded anxious.
I flipped on the TV and saw smoke pouring out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It looked like some idiot had flown a small plane right into the side of the building. “What the hell happened?” I asked. With a more urgent tone he said, “I don’t know, but I’ve gotta go,” and hung up.
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I stared at the screen. The shot was from a live, unmanned camera affixed atop another downtown building. The towers bisected a crystal blue sky. Zero clouds. What happened?
Being a business news journalist, I knew a lot of my show guests worked in that tower. I was mentally ticking off who worked on which floor when suddenly a second plane, clearly a large passenger jet, plowed into the South Tower. Instinctively, my right hand flew to my belly and my left hand covered my mouth. I grabbed the phone and woke up my father on the West Coast. “Dad, turn on the news. NOW.”
My father, a surgeon and fully aware his daughter was eight months pregnant, took one look at the TV and immediately adopted his reassuring “doctor” voice. “Liz, I’m sure there’s an explanation for this. Whatever it is, I need you to be really calm, OK?”
“I am calm, Dad. But I’ve got to get back to the studio.” The newswoman in me was kicking in. I hung up and jumped back into my clothes, into the car and sped back to the office.
When I walked in, people looked shocked. Glancing surreptitiously at my stomach, my manager said, “Liz, if you want to go home, we understand. We’ll get someone else to do the show.” I was perplexed. We’re in the news business. The thought of not doing my job at a time like this literally never occurred to me. I thanked him and said, “No, I’m here. Have we figured out which Wall Street firms are on which floors?”
But I already knew the answer. Cantor Fitzgerald occupied the top floors of the North Tower. Huge staff. Fund giant Fred Alger Management was right below them on the 93rd floor. My chest tightened. My dear friend David Alger was their CEO. I silently begged. Please, PLEASE, David, tell me you’re not there.
Sandler O’Neill Partners was on the 104th floor of the South Tower. Co-founder Herman Sandler was a Wall Street legend. He’d be fine, right? Marsh & McLennan. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. Euro Brokers. I knew people in both towers.
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Whatever hope we had that friends had survived disappeared when both towers collapsed, enveloping lower Manhattan in that awful, sickening gray ash.
But I kept thinking, “Surely David Alger had led his troops down the stairwell before the collapse. That’s David.”
I envisioned him gripping a bullhorn, marching north on Broadway. He was larger than life with the best smile ever. I’d seen him just two weeks earlier when he had been a guest on the network.
I ran into him after that interview. “Liz!” he boomed, flashing that high-wattage smile. He looked down at my belly, put his hand gently on it, looked directly in my eyes and said, “You’re going to be the best mom.” David was the proud father of two daughters, so he knew from whence he spoke.
I would never see David again. He died on 9/11 along with 2,977 others in the towers, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania – all victims of the coordinated attack by the Al Qaeda terrorist group. I attended David’s funeral. His daughters were drenched in grief.
A month and two weeks later, still mourning him, Herman Sandler, and so many others, including the 658 innocent souls who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, I felt contractions. My obstetrician’s office told me to come in. My doctor’s practice was in the city. They quietly ushered me past a pregnant woman staring blankly in the corner of the waiting room. I later learned her husband had been killed in the World Trade Center attacks. Twenty-five years later, I can still remember thinking, “How can I be happy right now? What kind of world am I bringing this child into?” Any joy felt inappropriate.
That night I gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Of course, I felt happiness, but it was tinged by an unseen gray veil of sadness. Trust me, all of us who were there on 9/11 felt the same way. I took comfort in knowing that all the letters in David’s last name – A, L, G, E and R are woven within the name we chose for our newborn: Gabrielle.
The darkness in the rotted hearts of those who stole lives and futures on 9/11 will never be understood, nor does that kind of evil deserve the effort. What does deserve effort is carrying on, reaching for the stars and living a good life while holding tight the memories of the 2,977 who didn’t get to continue theirs.
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