9/11: Twenty-five Years Later (2026)

Alumni Remember and Reflect 

Thank you to the alumni who have submitted articles. Further contributions or comments should be sent to news@chasealum.org.

I was working for J.P. Morgan out of Chase Manhattan Plaza on Sept. 11 and staying for the week at Embassy Suites at the World Financial Center. I was part of Operations senior management, and our weekly meeting had been moved to Tom Ketchum's office at 270 Park Ave. from 60 Wall St. I took the subway from the World Trade Center at about 8:15 am. I saw a plane flying very low down the West Side Highway and was concerned. That ended up being the second plane that hit the World Trade Center that morning. 

The city emptied out and I was worried for my staff who worked in the basement of CMP. We were keeping them informed and didnt' allow them to go outside for a number of hours.

Later in the day we all tried to get out of the city and I was concerned about how to get to Philadelphia.

I needed some medicine and learned every drugstore allowed us to get the pills we needed without a pre scription.

At about 6 pm I ended up walking down to Penn Station and heard a train was leaving. We saw many disheveled people in the streets. They'd walked up from downtown in a wall of smoke. I got home that night at about midnight, exhausted. 

I also lost my luggage at the Embassy Suites. They wanted me to sign my life away to get my luggage several weeks later, which of course I didnt.

I will NEVER forget that long day.

from a "Chase vendor alumnus": couldn't forget the jumpers

I was there. It happened to me. I was across Church Street from the Trade Center. Landing gear hit the top of our building and there was a jet engine in front of our building. But the most horrifying aspect was watching the jumpers which caused me to have PTSD. Apparently watching other humans die does something to the unconscious. It disturbs the underlying expectation that one is safe from disaster and causes depression. I can only imagine what being in a war does to your brain.

 

I was at Moody's headquarters, across the WTC plaza from the North Tower. We had an 8:30 management meeting on the 11th (top) floor. At 8:40 we heard something that sounded like a plane breaking the sound barrier. I said, “Some Air Force fighter jockey is about to lose his job.” Then we heard a large boom. We  looked out the window and saw a gaping hole on the north face of the North Tower, with huge flames everywhere and lots of airborne debris. I said, “I think Muslim terrorists hijacked a private jet at Teterboro and crashed it into the WTC.”

 

We stood at the window watching when one of us spotted a second airliner heading toward the South Tower, which exploded in our direction as the fully fueled airliner crashed through the building, shooting a ball of fire and debris to the northeast – at us, standing in front of a plate-glass window! At that moment we could have been killed; airplane debris fell all around us. Some of the landing gear landed a few feet above our heads on the roof, and one of the plane's engines fell in front of our building. But nothing came through the window. We then knew that this was a terrorist attack and not an accident.

 

I went back to my office and called my parents and my girlfriend to tell them that I was OK, and I also sent emails to friends with the same message. (We had full connectivity until 10 when the North Tower fell.)

 

From time to time I would go to my window, which unfortunately faced the North Tower. I watched the jumpers, some of whom were holding hands as they fell – young men and women. They had to jump or burn to death. They were 30-somethings, wearing business casual: They looked like us. I knew that I shouldn’t be watching other people die, but I couldn’t turn away.

 

This went on until 10 when we were ordered by the NYPD to evacuate the building. They were worried that the North Tower would fall on our building; it didn’t, but when it collapsed,  dust and debris did make escape difficult and dangerous. We left the building and began the trek uptown. Giuliani had shut down the subway and all other forms of public transportation to add inconvenience to tragedy. Luckily I lived on the Upper West Side, a walkable distance of about 7.5 miles.

 

A colleague and I grabbed our briefcases and began the walk up Church Street into Tribeca. (We assumed that we would be back at our office the next day.) When we reached Canal Street, a moan went through the crowd and we looked back to see the South Tower collapse, which was terrifying since we had to assume that there were a lot of people still inside. When we got to Houston Street, the other tower fell.

 

When we got to Washington Square, there was a black man saying over and over, “Can’t blame this on the black man,” and he was right. We knew it was al-Qaeda. As we proceeded northward, we were careful to avoid tall buildings such as the Empire State and Rockefeller Center. Before noon, we made it to the Island Cafe at 90th and Madison. We drank there for a while and then went to a friend’s apartment nearby for more hours of drinking. The apartment became a gathering spot for a number of shell-shocked people. 

 

Finally, I walked home across Central Park in the pitch darkness (there was a citywide blackout). I had to climb 22 flights of stairs. 

 

 

a family story: (one degree of separation from Ground Zero)

 

By John Vaughey (feeling fortunate to have been at Chase, 1963-1976)

Our daughter and son-in-law lived so close to the Twin Towers that their apartment building became unsafe for occupancy on 9/11. They had to move out with only 30 minutes of notice, along with their new daughter of seven months and their guest, our son, a recent graduate of the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and living temporarily in Atlanta while looking for a job. 

 

Many TV news services that week repeatedly displayed a video of our son-in-law running from the apartment and smoking Towers with a handkerchief over the face of his infant daughter. Since transportation and mobile phone  systems in Manhattan were both inoperable for several hours, my daughter walked all the way from the Twin Towers area up to West 72^nd Street to support a friend whose husband died in one of the Towers. Tuesday night our four family members slept on floors or couches in various Manhattan apartments, thanks to friends.

 

On 9/11 another son then living in Manhattan knew how to make phone calls via computers and used his skill to contact our three adult family members evicted from the apartment and confirm they were unhurt. He then called my wife and me in Spain, where we were on vacation, to let us know that our family was physically unhurt and safe…but challenged!

The next day (Wednesday), our son from Atlanta joined thousands of other volunteers working on recovery efforts near the Towers, alongside fire and other professionals.   Our daughter and her husband started looking for a replacement apartment in NYC or its suburbs.

 

On Thursday, a fire superintendent asked our son from Atlanta to help the people in charge of Pier 40 to manage substantially all supplies being received for disaster recovery, starting with things like inhalators. Our son’s first questions were: What and where is Pier 40?  By the end of that day, our son had been given charge of over 100 volunteers on the 15-acre pier, and he led them until late on 9/18/01, when he and the other volunteers were replaced by paid staff. It had been very tough volunteer duty every single day, with large and small supplies arriving steadily and without warning on the huge pier by boat and truck, before being forwarded where and when they were needed. The fire superintendent must have recognized that our son was a natural leader, but he also had to become a quick study in logistics amidst the chaos. 

Later:  Our daughter and son-in-law attended upward of 25 funerals, including one for a friend with whom they had dinner on September 10th.