Memories of 9/11 that still haunt after 25 years
by Eric Hall
Franklin Templeton Investments had just purchased Fiduciary Trust International, a New York firm that had managed money for about a thousand families across generations. I worked in a business consulting group inside Franklin Templeton out of San Mateo, and my team was the first assigned to the integration. Three months before September 2001, five vice presidents at Fiduciary began reporting to me. It was the only direct reporting relationship between the two firms.
Fiduciary Trust International occupied floors 93 through 96 of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. That September I was scheduled to fly to New York to train them. I was to arrive September 10.
The other half of my job was keeping Franklin’s four presidents current on every technology investment the firm had underway worldwide. That was normally a monthly meeting. This one was off cycle, which meant something was pressing. One of the presidents called me. “Sorry, Eric,” he said. “I need you in the conference room with my co-presidents next week. Be prepared to discuss the pace of spend and the clearest forecast you can give us.”
I was not willing to cancel the training. A coworker named John Hart volunteered to go in my place.
I was at my desk by 5:30 that Tuesday morning, the way I always was, before anyone else came in, radio on. A little after six the first report came out of New York that a plane had hit the North Tower. My people were in the other tower. I remember the relief. I remember how short it was.
I called my boss, Franklin’s chief administrative officer, on his way to San Mateo. He swore. He asked whether our president knew yet. I told him he was my next call. Roughly 15 minutes later, a second plane crashed into Floors 77-85 of the South Tower. It was the first tower to collapse. Both buildings were soon gone.
John Hart was killed. He lived in Danville with his wife of 10 years and four children. All five of the vice presidents who reported to me were also killed. In all we lost 88 people that day. I spent the next couple days on the phone from California trying to locate anyone else in that Tower who worked for me.
One man had walked out for coffee, just before the second plane had hit. But since all transportation was immediately locked down, it took him two days to walk to his New Jersey home before he contacted me to confirm he made it out alive.
In the immediate aftermath, the rest of Franklin Templeton was mobilizing. I was one of the few people inside Franklin who understood how Fiduciary actually ran, how data moved from investment management and the custodian departments to the back office and trading support. I flew to New York with a team. The people closer to the clients worked the phones for two or three days, calling families several times a day. Over time, office space at Rockefeller Center was located and secured, and we moved the businesses into it.
In those two to three days immediately after the attack, I swung emotionally from rage to telling myself to get focused and work. Everybody was doing that. It was a very raw and difficult period. The effects changed slightly as time passed but everybody directly involved is still carrying those effects in many forms today.
Twenty-five years later I am putting this down on paper, and the hair on my arms is standing up.
In remembrance, every September 11th, I wear a silver bracelet on my wrist. All eighty-eight names are inscribed on it.
Eric Hall is a native resident of the Bay Area; he currently resides in Pleasant Hill.