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On Top of
the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick and 9/11: A Story of Loss and
Renewal by Tom Barbash Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Good Grief Tom Barbash spent months living with
college-friend Howard Lutnick in the aftermath of September 11, and provides
a friendly, insider’s view of what went on with Lutnick and Cantor Fitzgerald
in his new book, On Top of
the World. Press coverage on Lutnick oscillated from highly positive to
highly negative in the weeks after 9/11. Many readers will recall the scene
of Lutnick breaking into tears on Larry King Live, as well as follow-up
stories that Lutnick failed to meet the promises he made to the families of
Cantor Fitzgerald employees who died on 9/11. Here’s an excerpt from early in the book,
pp. 71-75: FRIDAY,
SEPTEMBER 21 Howard is out somewhere when I arrive at his apartment, but he'll be
back soon. Two of our college friends, like most here, are hard at work
answering phones and filing letters that have arrived from around the world,
from churches and synagogues, middle schools, politicians and business
leaders, a few celebrities. I had expected a somber place as I walked here, but
at least on the surface it isn't at all. Everyone has a role and everyone is
communicating. The bosses are Allison’s high school friends, Karen Weinberg,
by occupation a TV and film makeup artist, and Lynne Granat, a marketing
director for a culinary academy, who have been devoting their days to helping
Howard and Allison set up a command center to assist the Cantor families. Karen tells me what it's been like the last two
weeks. Not all the families of those who died live in the New York area; some
have come in from as far away as India, China, and Japan. And since there's
no one at a Cantor office who can help them with hotels or negotiate for
visas, they've been calling here and talking to Karen or Allison. Those answering phones are equipped with
information on filing for death certificates, on insurance, on funerals, and
even caterers for memorial services. In addition, the surviving employees
have been calling in to arrange rides from their homes to their new offices
in New Jersey or Connecticut. Some workers whose divisions have since been
closed have been encouraged to relocate to the London office. "They
keep calling needing things," Karen says of the families. "A woman
called the other day to ask if we'd found her husband's Producers
tickets. She wanted to sell them. Can you believe it? Her husband's dead and
she's worried about theater tickets." The calls increasingly have been about money, about
what Cantor will do to take care of the families. I flip through a copy of the Daily News,
and amid a photo spread of the memorials is a picture of eight grim
pallbearers carrying the long wooden coffin of Tim Coughlin, Howard's popular
head of U.S. Treasuries, who died at forty-two. It is a sight too rare. Not only have there been
few survivors, there are few bodies. Rescue workers continue to dig through
the mountain of burning steel and scorched concrete. The families are asked
to bring toothbrushes and hairbrushes to the medical examiner's office for
the purpose of DNA identification. The details they are given are grisly.
Fingerprints can be used, but only if they can find fingers; dental records,
if they can find jaws. There are all manner of body parts being recovered.
Tens of thousands of tests will be conducted and the slow searching
continues, and by the eighth month, fewer than a third of the missing bodies
will be found. Photographs
of close friends and of Gary cover the downstairs walls. Most were taken this
summer at Howard's fortieth birthday party, which took place at a castle in
England. There's Doug Gardner leaning back on a bench, next to Howard, the
two moguls in sunglasses away from the office. There's another of Doug
swallowing up Howard's boys, Kyle and Brandon, in his huge arms. Doug was a
large, big-hearted, deeply principled man, six feet four, his shoulders
memorably broad, his chest cut like a weight lifter's. He liked to bang under
the boards at basketball, the game his primary love interest until he met his
wife. The photographs are matted on construction paper
and the words are penned in Magic Marker: WE LOVE YOU
JONATHAN UMAN. WE LOVE YOU GLENN KIRWIN. WE LOVE YOU DAVE BAUER. WE LOVE YOU
FRED VARACCHI. WE LOVE YOU JOE SHEA. WE LOVE YOU TIM GRAZIOSO. And on and on.
It is Howard
and Allison's alternative to the "missing posters" that have
appeared around town. Among those photos is one of Howard and Andy Kates, the handsome younger brother of Howard's college roommate Seth Kates. He is wearing a tweed jacket, a royal blue shirt, and a bemused expression. For Howard's fortieth, Allison asked friends to contribute a page—stories, poems, pictures for a commemorative journal. Andy created a fictional interview with an old teacher of Howard's, Mrs. Weiner, who remembered Howard's grade school business savvy. In a week they will find Andy's body, largely
intact—just broken bones. His service is scheduled for Sunday. He was thirty-seven
and had three children. His wife, Emily, had just given birth to a son. I am hardly the first to remark on this, but it is
difficult to look at a wall of photographs of people in their prime, with
their families and friends, and know that they're all dead. Since most of the
photographs are of couples, one can look at the smiling face of the spouse
left behind and have that terrible feeling that happens when watching a movie
for the second time—looking at a character who is happy and hopeful, knowing
that in a few moments their life will be wrecked beyond recognition. John Swomley, a college friend who introduced Howard and Allison, has dropped his legal practice in Boston for a few days to fill in doing errands and answering phones. Close to ten friends of Allison's and Edie's have put their lives on hold in order to help out. They are not playing minor roles—they are filling human resources jobs and accounting jobs, doing public relations and office coordination. Every room serves a separate function. There are letters to sort, funerals to place on the website, and e-mails to answer. Upstairs in the dining and living rooms, Howard and his executives have been gathering to rearrange personnel, meet with bankheads, even interview prospective employees. It has, oddly, the adrenaline-laden feel of a
start-up. There's just enough time to pull all the elements together, and
even then they may miss their deadline. The survival of the company, though
it's seeped in history, is far from certain. "You
need any boots?" John says, and it's then that I see the office I'm in
isn't an office. It's Howard and Allison's closet. Shelves run the length of
the walls, and they hold a Marcosian collection of shoes and boots, leather
jackets, and a half mile of suits and jeans. It's like a showroom. But what's surprising is that the Lutnicks aren't
allowing themselves to be self-conscious about it. There's a crisis going on
and their house has been turned over to those who are here to help them, and
to be with them. You can wander any room or dig through the fridge. There's
not a scrap of privacy for Allison and Howard here. Their lives are entirely
open. In
this spirit, Howard has ramped up the flow of activity by giving out his home number at
the crisis center. The next day it appeared on the website. Anyone from
anywhere in the world now can call in and and speak to him. Not such a
problem for most people, but these days it seems that everyone, everyplace,
has something to say either to or about Howard. The phone rings incessantly.
The fax machine churns out page after page after page. The letters arrive in
tall bundles. Upstairs in Howard's den, his childhood friend
David Kravette is sitting by himself. I met Kravette around the time I met
Howard, when we were kids playing eastern tennis tournaments. His is the
first story I hear about that day, and it is brutal: the sound of the
elevators free falling to the ground, the sight of the fireball that came a
few yards from his face and that overtook one of his colleagues, a beautiful
young woman named Lauren Manning. He tells me the details in an almost
matter-of-fact fashion. He says he's doing all right. He's got a new job now
in Phil Marber's division. His old division is gone. It's all about survival now, he says. Getting
through to the other side of this. "I'll tell you this," he says. "If
we lost this guy [Howard] we'd be through. There's no way we'd make it. We'd
have liquidated the company. That I'm sure of." Howard
arrives at around ten P.M. carrying two huge black briefcases. He kisses
Allison and walks around the apartment hugging friends. At the crisis center,
when Howard addressed all the families who'd lost loved ones, he requested
that if anyone wanted to ask him a question, they hug him. He has always been
a physical man, fond of rubbing a shoulder, slapping a back. And it fits with
his personality—his pleasure in being a host, in feeding his friends, showing
them a good time. Now, though, he looks as if he's aged ten years. There are
deep lines in his face from not sleeping, and from crying. The news here is that against monumental odds
Cantor Fitzgerald and eSpeed are functioning smoothly again—or as smoothly as
a company can without offices and three-quarters of its personnel. They still
need a permanent place for the equities team. Much of Wall Street has been in
chaos, layoffs everywhere, at the airlines and investment houses. The
previous day, the Dow dropped 4.5 percent in one of the busiest days of
trading in history. Cantor is in crisis-hiring mode. They need lawyers,
accountants, a human resources team, and dozens of new brokers and traders. Now a major concern is to specify what Howard meant
when he aid the company would be giving 25 percent of its profits to the
families. Would there actually be profits? How would they deal with
healthcare, bonuses, and unused vacation time? The problems are manifold. "Our problems have
problems," Allison says. Allison, formerly a partner in a large Manhattan
law firm, has been talking to families from the early morning until she can't
stay awake anymore at night. "There's no one I know on earth who would
do what he's doing," she says. "He's made up of parts no one has.
He's got a hundred hearts. If he does this, if he pulls this company through,
if all of them pull it through, it'll be the most miraculous thing anyone's
heard of." The operative word for me in that is "if." It is
the first time I hear anyone in the inner circle mentioning the
possibility that they won't pull through—but of course there's that chance.
With all that's happened, how could there not be? Whatever your
perspective about Lutnick before reading On Top of
the World, you will come away from the book with new information, and
perhaps, a new respect. Was he selfish? Was he generous? Did he really care
about those who died? Was he in grief? I came away with the impression of a
man who did extraordinary things under tremendous pressure, and who has been
misunderstood more often than not. There may be other books about Lutnick,
but I hope this is the one that sets the benchmark. Thanks to On Top of
the World, I concluded that Lutnick has taken his grief and transformed
it into rebuilding a business to provide financial benefits for the families
of his friends and colleagues who died suddenly, watched by the entire world. Steve Hopkins, June 21, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the July 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/On
Top of the World.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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