On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda hijackers took control of four commercial airplanes. Two struck the World Trade Center’s twin towers in Lower Manhattan, a third hit the Pentagon, and a fourth, aimed at Washington, D.C., crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back. Nearly 3,000 people died that morning, most of them in New York, where both towers collapsed within two hours of the first impact.
The attacks reordered American life almost overnight, from airport security to two wars to a new Department of Homeland Security. Some Lower Manhattan firms lost most of their workforce in a single morning. New Yorkers of all ages and occupations were killed in the terrorist attacks 25 years ago, and those who survived have stories of how they were kept away: a pregnant woman who went into labor; a football game that went a little too late the night before; an alarm that never went off. Twenty-five years on, some of the people who were supposed to be in or near the towers continue recalling their fateful day. Among them include current Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and former Senator Mitt Romney.
Lutnick, then CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, worked out of the North Tower’s 105th floor and was normally at his desk by 6 a.m. His wife had him take their son to school instead. “So it was my son Kyle’s first day of kindergarten,” he told NPR in 2016. His phone kept ringing without connecting that morning; he later learned it was his brother, Gary, trying to reach him to say goodbye. Gary, who went to work as usual, was among the 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who died.
Larry Silverstein, who had signed a 99-year lease on the Twin Towers weeks earlier, held daily breakfast meetings at Windows on the World, the restaurant located on the North Tower’s 106th floor. His wife booked him a dermatologist appointment for the morning of September 11 instead. “You learn early on to say, ‘Yes, dear,’” he recalled. The near misses ran through his circle: his children Roger and Lisa were both running late to the same meeting, and his longtime aide, Geoffrey Wharton, cut breakfast short and rode the elevator down at 8:44 a.m., two minutes before the plane hit. No one else at the restaurant that morning survived.
Michael Lomonaco was the executive chef at Windows on the World. That day, he stopped to get his glasses adjusted at a shop on the concourse level and was still there when the first plane hit. “It saved my life,” he said. More than 30 of his kitchen staff died, and he has since raised nearly $25 million for restaurant workers’ families.
Jim Pierce, a managing director at Aon Corporation and a cousin of former President George W. Bush, had a meeting scheduled on one of the South Tower’s top floors. The group grew too large for the room, so it moved to a nearby building at the last minute. Twelve people never got word of the change, and 11 of them died. Pierce watched the second plane hit from next door. “I knew we were under attack,” he said, describing bodies falling from the towers and chaos on the street below.
Mitt Romney, then president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics, planned to unveil the Games’ torchbearers at a press conference blocks from the towers. A funding dispute in Congress over Olympic security money kept him in Washington instead. “We had planned to be in New York City on the 11th,” he wrote. “Our team had planned an elaborate press conference adjacent to the World Trade Center at Battery Park.”
Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson ran a charity out of the North Tower’s 101st floor and missed a meeting after an interview ran long. “I was meant to be there that morning,” she wrote. Her charity’s mascot doll, Little Red, was found in the rubble and now sits in the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
Jimmy Dunne, a co-founder of investment bank Sandler O’Neill & Partners, was supposed to be with his employees on the 104th floor of the South Tower. Instead he was 50 miles north, trying to qualify for a golf championship. Sixty-six of the firm’s 171 employees died. He still marks his golf ball with a “Q,” in honor of colleague Christopher Quackenbush, who didn’t make it out.
Two future collaborators were booked on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to hit the North Tower. Mark Wahlberg canceled his seat a week early for the Toronto Film Festival instead, and later drew criticism for telling Men’s Journal that had he been aboard, “it wouldn’t have went down like it did,” a comment he apologized for. Seth MacFarlane missed the same flight by minutes after his travel agent gave him the wrong departure time. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’m booked on Flight 11,’” he recalled.
