Online memorial records Cantor's rise from ashes
"Good morning Johnny G.," wrote Monica, who signed herself as a co-worker and friend.
Other messages on the employee memorial Web site at Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond brokerage that occupied floors 101 to 105 in the north tower of the World Trade Center, are intense and personal, like private jottings in a diary accidentally left open.
"Hey Chappy," wrote Irene Boehm of West Hempstead, N.Y., whose husband, Bruce, a bond trader, died Sept. 11, 2001, their 19th wedding anniversary. Having just returned from a trip with her two daughters to Cancún, Mexico, Boehm logged onto the Cantor site to "chat" with her husband and keep him up on things — a daily ritual.
"You would have loved the outside bar overlooking the ocean," she wrote. "Remember when we were in Florida and we found the only outside cafe between Palm Beach and Lauderdale? Well, I pictured you sitting at the outside bar looking at the ocean and enjoying a beer."
The Web site was created by Cantor to commemorate the 658 employees killed in the terrorist attacks two years ago. One thing is clear: Time has done little to heal the wounds of Sept. 11.
But the fact that the Web site exists — that Cantor Fitzgerald still exists — brings a degree of comfort to the "Cantor families," the collective name for all the husbands and wives and children and relatives and friends who lost loved ones that day.
"For me, knowing that Cantor is doing good business and thriving still almost extends the life of my husband," said Mary Ellen Salamone of North Caldwell, N.J., whose husband, John, was a Cantor broker and father of three. "If Cantor went under, then all of John's work, his career — everything — would be gone.
"Knowing Cantor is still there ... it's comforting."
Cantor is still very much in business, still one of the world's biggest brokers of foreign exchange and bond deals, on track to earn $110 million in profits this year. And it is still making good on its pledge to donate 25 percent of profits to victims' families, along with 10 years of health-care coverage.
Indeed, Cantor's publicly traded electronic brokerage subsidiary, eSpeed, has benefited richly from this year's bull market in bonds. The stock, which began trading in 1999, is up almost 200 percent since Sept. 11, 2001.
But if this makes it sound like the company has recovered from the attacks, it hasn't.
"Emotionally, it's still the same," said Mark Lewis, 32, a vice president of Cantor's government-bond desk, who was running late that morning and arrived just in time to look up at the black smoke pouring out of the building.
"Two years have gone by and it's really scary because it's still as sad today as it was then," said Lewis, who lives in Upper Montclair, N.J. "I think about it constantly, and there are days when I want to break down and cry."
Every Cantor employee who was at work that Sept. 11 died. The victims' statistics are numbing: Among those killed were the parents of 953 children; the husbands of three who gave birth Sept. 11; the husbands of 38 pregnant women. The list includes 20 sets of relatives, including 10 sets of siblings.
The dead included senior partners and trading clerks, software designers and bond brokers, receptionists and mailroom clerks. They left behind 400 widows and widowers. The company lost 65 percent of its entire New York work force. The only survivors were people who were on vacation, out of the office sick or on business, or running late for work.
People such as the company's chairman and chief executive, Howard Lutnick, who had taken the morning off to escort his son to kindergarten. Or Amy Nauiokas, Cantor's director of marketing, who overslept and was 10 minutes late.
Immediately after the disaster, Nauiokas set up an office in her Manhattan apartment and started working from there. Her former assistant, who had left Cantor in July and was living in Boston, rang her doorbell and rejoined the firm that day. "She stayed on permanently," Nauiokas said.
Indeed, a lot of former employees who had taken sabbaticals or early retirements came back to help rebuild the company. The firm is now in a temporary office in midtown Manhattan.
"Because we were a private partnership, we grew from a family model," Nauiokas said. "It was typical to hire relatives and good friends, people you worked with in the past."
That is why the company's pledge to share a quarter of its profits for five years with the families has proven just as therapeutic for battle-scarred employees as it has for the victims' relatives.
And like last year, Cantor Fitzgerald and eSpeed said this week they will donate 100 percent of their Sept. 11 revenues to the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund for victims' families. Last year the charity day raised more than $5 million.
For employees, such acts of generosity have given them a newfound mission and sense of purpose.
As of June 30, Cantor had disbursed nearly $120 million to families of employees killed in the attack.
Cantor itself has focused on growing its institutional stock-trading business, which caters to hedge funds, pension funds and other big professional investors. And it is slowly entering other lines of business, including institutional fixed-income trading and asset management.
For all the good news — the acts of heroism, the innumerable shows of generosity — Cantor's rise from the ashes at Ground Zero has not been without controversy.
Back in July, a former bond dealer was awarded nearly $1.5 million in damages by a London court after claiming he had been bullied, berated and threatened out of his job by his boss, Lee Amaitis, who runs the firm's international division.
Meanwhile, the firm is being sued by the operator of the World Trade Center for $1 million in back rent, owed for the period between Aug. 1 and Sept. 10, 2001.
Lutnick, the company's chief executive, gained notoriety for his decision to stop paying employee salaries a mere three days after the attacks — before anyone was officially declared dead. Following the public outcry, Lutnick, who lost his own brother, announced his commitment to share 25 percent of the firm's profits.
Though some families will never forget the paycheck dispute, many praise Lutnick and Cantor for their unwavering support.
"It is very hard to trust anyone these days, but I find myself trusting Cantor," said Boehm. "I am able to stay home with my children and not work because they are paying for medical insurance."