It’s a distinction no one wants. Cantor Fitzgerald lost more loved ones on 9/11 than any other organization.
The firm’s offices occupied the 101st through 105th floors of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, above where American Airlines Flight 11 struck at 8:46 a.m. Of Cantor’s 960 New York workers, 658 died, along with 50 contractors and visitors. Another 61 were lost at Euro Brokers, which is now part of Cantor.
Every number was a person. Every person had a family. Every family has a story worth remembering. Edie is a Cantor family member. Her office was on the 101st floor, but she wasn’t there that morning. Her brother Gary died on the 104th floor. Her other brother, Howard, then Cantor Fitzgerald’s Chairman and CEO, was spared because he was taking his son to the first day of kindergarten.
On Sept. 14, 2001, Edie and Howard co-founded the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund to help the victims’ relatives rebuild their lives. Many were strangers. They became family.
Caroline joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 2002. At the firm’s annual Charity Day, which raises money for hundreds of charities around the world and disaster relief efforts, she would ask the movie stars, athletes and colleagues who attended: “Where were you on September 11?”
Early replies mirrored her own experiences, as people were headed for work or school drop-off. But with the passing years, the answers changed: high-school chemistry, middle-school homeroom, first grade. Then the inevitable. “I wasn’t born yet,” said a twentysomething actor. Soon, we had memorial volunteers with no firsthand memory of the attacks.
Each September 11, we say “Always remember.” Many post #NeverForget. But the painful truth is that memory fades.
Edie thought back to laying out Cantor’s names with meaningful adjacencies for the National September 11 Memorial. She used to know every name of the lost; 25 years later, those names can be harder to summon. If our own memories were fading, what would a generation or two removed recall?
With the 25th anniversary approaching, we decided the voices of Cantor’s families needed to speak directly to the next generations.
To preserve these memories, Cantor families submitted 176 essays, letters, poems and recollections for “The Families: 9/11 Anthology of Love, Loss and Lessons of Resilience.” We were profoundly changed by their determination and hope.
Burn survivors write of gratitude. A West Point cadet who lost his brother channels his grief into a PTSD program for veterans. A father embraces deep faith after losing two sons. Mothers describe raising children with joy against impossible odds.
And we heard from people who weren’t yet born, like the son who never met his father and now finds a path forward even as he grapples with generational grief.
Others write candidly about addiction and turning pain into purpose through service and philanthropy.
We know first-hand that revisiting the heartbreak of Sept. 11 is not easy. In working on the anthology, Edie recalled 20-hour days writing thousands of checks by hand to widows and new mothers, building support groups and family networks from nothing and attending too many funerals. Returning to her last call with Gary is always painful.
The true gift of “The Families” is in the lessons its contributors share: how to show up for each other, find a mission bigger than your own pain, and allow joy and grief to share a sentence. Those lessons belong to anyone who has had to keep living after losing someone.
Edith Lutnick is Co-Founder, president and executive director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund. Caroline Aiken Koster is general counsel of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund and a senior Cantor Fitzgerald corporate lawyer. “The Families: 9/11 Anthology of Love, Loss and Lessons of Resilience” is out now and all proceeds from the book benefit the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund.