Angels Manning Heaven’s Trading Floors

Never Forget 9-11-01

Dear QI Family,

Italians don’t use the word ‘family’ lightly. But some of you have been with QI for more than eight years now…that makes you family. If you’re new to my world of words, you may not know how I became who I am. My story starts on Labor Day weekend, 2001. I just didn’t know it at the time. Today, I do. The words I penned in tribute to Herman Sandler have resonated as never before in the aftermath of the pandemic. It is the memory of this man whose enthusiasm and work ethic fostered my drive to consistently produce work, the ethos of which remains unassailable. The man who bragged he was the first to the office every morning in the South Tower and the last to turn the lights off, has been besmirched by the Work from Home initiative, which is thankfully dying on the vine of economic reality.

Twenty-two years on, 9/11 has morphed from a call to be introspective to reason to be retrospective. I am who I am because of the biggest travesty to visit our nation since my maternal grandfather was blasted awake on the deck of his ship by Japanese bombers in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

“If it’s Osama Bin Laden or you, I’ll take my chances.” Those were the words I snarked to my mother on Wednesday, January 2, 2002. I’d come home to San Antonio for Christmas 2001 on December 21, 2001. We New Yorkers were convinced those who’d attacked American soil were coming back for a New Year’s encore. The plan was to fly back on January 6^th. Sixteen days…with my mother. Let’s just say that the State Department didn’t need a weapon of mass destruction with my mom in the country. They had her…hence my declaration about changing my ticket to head back to New York early. If it was to be a choice between terrorism and my mom, who remains to this day my best friend, just one I ought not live with, the terrorists win every day.

At the same time, that Wednesday, January 2, 2002, the father of my four children was being talked out of leaving New York the next day. Why bother being back in the office for one day, that Friday, when most of the world wasn’t returning to work until the following Monday? And so, he changed his ticket to return to Dallas that Sunday at the same time I was changing my ticket to fly back to New York that Thursday.

We met that Thursday night…when neither of us was scheduled to be in New York.

To say “the rest is history” with reference to our four children, who have rocked my world in a way words fail to capture, is an insult. My life as I know it has come to pass because of 9/11. That, I share with you as my family, is retrospection. The day I lost so much, the day the world lost its innocence, put me on a path to gain everything I am.

Who would you be if not for 9/11?

I’ll never forget. Don’t you ever dare.

Danielle

Please enjoy — Angels Manning Heaven’s Trading Floors —  Never Forget 9-11-01