9/11 Recollections - 10 years later

Most of the moving and impassioned recollections of this 10th anniversary have, appropriately, been by those directly involved as victims, survivors, first responders, or their families and friends. As well they should. This anniversary should still be defined by direct experience and memory, and should not yet be relegated to icon, myth, and symbol. Indeed, one might ask if there hasn’t been too much of a rush to install icon, myth, and symbol; surely, as one looks at long-term responses to historic events which have become part of the public consciousness, it appears to me that it has.

However, this recollection should be understood as but a footnote to history and not as central to that public consciousness. Nevertheless, for most of us, our memory is vivid, even if we were not direct participants, and the full story of how our lives were changed then and now helps bring vitality to that fateful day.

On 11 September 2001, I was with a small delegation accompanying Edgar Bronfman to Mexico City.

To understand such a visit requires a recollection of the central role that Edgar Bronfman and Vicente Fox, Mexico’s president, each played at that time.

Vicente Fox, it should be remembered, was the tall, American trained, business background president of Mexico at the time. He was a symbol of a new Mexico, and more importantly, of a new priority with the United States. George W Bush, remember him, had very little international experience or curiosity, Mexico being the exception, since as a Texan he lived on its border. Texan Bush and Mexican Fox seemed destined for a unique and mutually productive relationship. Bush exhibited only isolationist tendencies but articulated an apparent exception for his articulate and imposing colleague to the south.

Thus it would hardly be surprising that Edgar Bronfman, then widely regarded as the symbolic “king of the Jews”, long-time President of the World Jewish Congress, Chair of the Board of Governors of Hillel International, Chair of the then existing Seagram Company, and Chair of the Samuel Bronfman Foundation [the name of the corporate foundation of the Seagram company which closed when the company did; I was its EVP], would have a person to person meeting with President Fox. It was a role he played with heads of state throughout the world for a long time.

We were accompanied on that trip by Israel Singer, the long time chief executive of the World Jewish Congress, Richard Joel, President of Hillel, Elon Steinberg, also a long-term executive with the WJC, and Robert Kasdon, the chief of security for Seagram. What a difference a decade makes. None of us is connected to the institutions which then significantly defined us.

Sitting in Edgar Bronfman’s suite watching events in NY unfold before us, one could hardly be surprised when the phone rang. It was President Fox himself asking if our meeting could be delayed for a day. [Given the lockdown of air travel and borders, it wasn’t as if we had much choice.]

That meeting did take place the very next day, but it was with a leader who had just watched his own international role diminished overnight. George Bush may not have cared about the rest of the world on 10 September, but on 12 September, as he emerged from his bunker, he could hardly avoid it. And that world did not exactly put Mexico at its center. The tone in the Mexican President’s conference room could hardly have been more somber.

But our real story was the rest of the week. Here we were, guests of a head of state, in a 5 star hotel, with access to private planes and influence at the top levels, with whatever resources one could ever need, yet we were prisoners. As with everyone who happened to find him or herself away from home that week, we had no way of going home, no way to know when we might, no way to know what our own future held. I vividly recall a brief conversation with Richard Joel who, looking at me, expressed his concern that he had never seen me look like that. My response, as prescient as any I suspect, was “the world that we know has changed forever.”

Our days were filled with exploratory phone calls, television, eating, and for a couple of us, “davening” [an oft-used expression for Jewish prayer.] Both Israel Singer and I were in the midst of the year of mourning for a parent and were therefore attending the local synagogue 3 times each day. Mostly waiting expectantly. [We should remember that this was before smart phones, or universally available wireless service. Only one of us had a cell phone which was able to call NY. None of us had a laptop. Only 10 years ago…]

Sometime each day brought a suggestion that we might leave. And each day that possibility dissipated.

Until… finally on Friday, we were told that private planes could fly but commercial ones couldn’t. Then that commercial planes could fly but private ones couldn’t. And it was not at all clear that either could fly over international borders. Nevertheless, we packed quickly and went to the airport where the Seagram jet was parked. After sitting there for a couple of hours, we learned the truth. We could fly to the Mexican boarder, but no further. To go home would require a taxi ride across the border and then be met by another private jet.

The border taxi caravan was not the typical mode of travel for this group. However, the most unforgettable moment was the startled and disconcerted expression of the US border officer who, after asking about our business in Mexico, was told by Edgar Bronfman. “I was here to meet with President Fox and now I have to get home for my grandson’s bar mitzvah.” It wasn’t clear which part of that sentence was more out of place in that setting. Our caravan was waved through.

Thus, late in the evening we arrived in Brownsville Texas, at the airport. The roads were newly blockaded, there was no commercial air traffic and the VIP lounge would have been easily confused with a collection of hand me downs in someone’s basement den. And then we learned that the chartered plane on its way to get us had to return to Miami because of bad weather in between.

We waited – until at about 2 am there was activity. No it was not yet a plane but rather a catering truck. Ah ha! Even in Brownsville, in the middle of the night, just a few days after 9/11, there were caterers able to supply private planes with an overabundance of food. It was our signal that a plane was on its way

The rest of the journey was uneventful. We slept our way to New York, leaving most of the trays of food untouched.

But there is an amusing denouement especially given the preoccupation with security which is now our everyday reality.

On the next Monday, I went to work at the Seagram building as I always did, and at the time I always did. I arrived at about 5:45 am only to discover that there were now airport type luggage screeners in the lobby. As a good citizen, I put my briefcase on the belt. But the security guard waved me through. “No reason to do that” he said. “We don’t start that up until 6 o’clock”.

Do you think he didn’t get the message?

Ten years later, all of us who had been on that trip are in very different places in our lives than we were that week But one thing is sure; we all got the message, loud and clear, that the world as we knew it was no more. And we, like everyone else, still aren’t completely sure what is.