The Day The World Stopped

September 11th is my 1st anniversary at Organic, Inc. yet as great as that is, I can’t help thinking back 6 years to the day our world changed.

I was sitting in Cadillac meeting with several dealers.  We had started at 8 am as one of the dealers was flying to Florida to set up his house for his winter retreat.

I left the meeting to make some copies of the deck, when someone in the office yelled out that a plane had just hit a building in New York.  The week or so before, some 16 year old had also flown into the side of an apartment building, so we joked “another drunk guy flying a plane”

Then the videos appeared.  Someone had CNBC.com or something like that on their screen.  We stood in shock as a video was played over and over again. No sound just these surreal images of a jet flying into the WTC tower and disappearing.  Over and over again she played the video as if it was on a loop.  I can’t actually recall if it was the first or the second plane that keep flying in and disappearing, just the horrible and sick feeling I got when I thought of what just happened.

If you recall the amateur video that was posted was raw, unedited, showing everything from the planes, the flames, the disintegration of the buildings and even the people jumping out of the building to avoid the flames.

Back to the meeting to announce what had happened, remember this all happened in a manner of 15 minutes, save the collapse, the room was in shock, the dealer who was catching a flight left to call the airport.

At this point no one knew why this had happened and what the news, every news source would be reporting over and over and over again. 

We continued our meeting, partially out of necessity, but also for some strange reason there seemed a need to be around other people.  At the breaks, we would call our loved ones and receive even more startling and shocking news about what had happened.  By this time the towers had collapsed and the city of New York was in a cloud of smoke and ash, two more planes had been crashed – we called the meeting about noon.  As we left the building, it was eerily quiet.  We were not far from the airport but no planes were flying, there seemed be no noise, the air was still.  Mr. Starr never made his flight.

To this day, the image of the owner of the trading firm on the 105th floor, haunts me.  He told the story of how he was walking his kids to school that day and how every single person in his small company was gone, just gone without a trace.  From that point on I realised that I will walk my kids to school on their first day – no matter how old they may be.

I guess it is one of those exceptional moments in history - the kind you never forget where you were, or some seemingly insignificant detail about that moment in time. For me it was driving home very slowly feeling as if the world had stopped but I didn’t know how to restart it. 

Vito