September 11, 2024, at home
9/11 MEMORY
In New York City in 1997, I covered commodities trading, specifically the futures and options trading of "Softs" (coffee, sugar, cocoa, cotton, orange juice, and occasionally whole milk) for a wire service broadcast to 93 countries. I covered those main five markets in real time, writing 13 to 16 articles/stories every weekday, plus one weekly feature story. I also covered weekly money supply meetings at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York every third week.
Anyway, around 8 a.m., before trading began, I would often walk across the street from our news bureau to interview the traders on the trading floor in one of the World Trade Center towers. I would ask them in person of their expectations for the trading day rather than just give them the usual call on the telephone.
About a year later in May 1998, I moved to Florida from New Jersey. The day before I started my drive south, I ventured into The City for lunch. I ate a sandwich and drank a soda while seated on a bench quite close to the towers. I sat there for three hours, eating and staring up at them, wondering when I would ever see them in person again. I never would.
I lost touch with the traders when I left the wire service in mid-1997. From that time into 1998, I was writing for four weekly financial newsletters (mainly about home improvement and home building, and sometimes about housewares, and health and beauty care). I lost that job and my apartment within days of each other, so I took that as a sign and an opportunity to get out of the rat race and relocate to southeastern Florida to be near my mom and other family members, and to restart my life. I was also searching for a slower pace, but being a working journalist who is now in Florida, and also working full time and then part time as a salesman at Sears and then Macy's, I never did find it.
On that fateful day in 2001, my thoughts immediately went to those commodities traders. They were wonderful, helpful guys. Since then, every year on 9/11, I have been able to find slight comfort by telling myself that because they worked on the second floor of one of the towers, they probably got out safely ... or maybe those guys weren't working there anymore at that time.
While my memories of them are now rather foggy, I still often wonder what became of them. My heart still aches for those who lost their lives, and their families and friends. Rest in peace.
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