STORIES OF IMPACT / Articles by Endurance / 9/11 - A Personal Perspective by Stephen K. Curry

9/11 - A Personal Perspective by Stephen K. Curry

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, began like any other late summer workday in New York City. I dropped my daughter off at her kindergarten on the Upper East Side and arrived a little late to my office at Bank of America Securities in midtown Manhattan around 8:30 AM. It was going to be a quiet morning as most of our management team was at our investor conference in San Francisco. Our offices, perched on the 48th floor of 9 West 57th Street, offered a sweeping view of Central Park to the north and on the other side of the floor a clear line of sight to the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, about four miles south in Lower Manhattan.

As I settled into my desk, my assistant burst in at 8:46 AM, her voice trembling: “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center!” I turned to my computer, where CNN’s live feed showed a gaping hole in the North Tower’s upper floors, flames and smoke billowing into the clear blue sky. My mind struggled to process the scene—it seemed impossible that an airliner could accidentally strike such a large structure. I rushed to the south side of our building with a direct view of the towers. At 9:03 AM, I watched in shock as a second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767, slammed into the South Tower, erupting in a fireball that confirmed this was no accident.

We had over 100 people in the South Tower, on the 81st and 83rd floors, in our Securities Processing and Safekeeping division. This back-office team was responsible for clearing and tracking billions of dollars in trades for our correspondent brokerage group. Just the previous week, on September 4, I had visited those floors to update associates on our investment banking strategy, sharing coffee and ideas in their bustling offices. Now, we scrambled for information about their safety. Phone lines were jammed, and the switchboard was useless. We managed brief cell phone contact with one employee evacuating the South Tower, who was descending the stairwells but unsure of their exact floor. All we could do was urge them to keep moving and pray the building would hold.

As the announcers were proclaiming the strength of the buildings, I walked to the south window and aligned the towers with the trusses outside. It was evident that the buildings were clearly deforming. The South Tower was visibly buckling, its steel frame warping under the intense heat. At 9:59 AM, less than an hour after the impact, the South Tower collapsed in a roar of dust and debris. At 10:28 AM, the North Tower followed, its collapse severing our fragile communications entirely. This was the moment we knew our world had changed.

New York City shut down. Mass transit systems halted, and bridges, including the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, were closed to all but emergency vehicles. In our midtown office, the staff was distraught, many leaving to find their way home through a city in chaos. I decided to stay, as my home was only a 10-minute walk away, and my HR and Administration executives stayed with me. The owner of the building called us to urge evacuation, but I decided to keep our building open as a refuge for anyone unable to travel. Our administrative team secured 200 hotel rooms at nearby locations like the Parker Meridien and the Plaza for employees returning from Lower Manhattan, many of whom arrived covered in ash and dust, their faces etched with shock. I ordered food, water, and a case of whiskey, which the returning employees gratefully accepted as they shared harrowing tales of escape—some by foot across bridges, others by ferry or even commandeered bicycles.

We began taking roll to account for our roughly 200 employees. Word spread that we were tracking survivors, and our phones rang past midnight with desperate calls from family members. The most difficult were inquiries about those still missing, like Bobbie Hughes, who had heroically returned to the South Tower to help a woman down the stairs just as the building began to collapse. He and one other colleague perished, among the 2,763 lives lost at the World Trade Center that day.

Our East Coast bankers and executives at our investment conference at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, were stranded when all flights were grounded nationwide. We set up a team to relay messages to their families and secure alternative transportation—moving vans, buses, even taxis for cross-country journeys that took days. That night we stayed at the office until 1:00 AM, calling employees’ homes and contacting relatives, piecing together stories of survival that echoed the citizen-led evacuation of Dunkirk during World War II.

That night was difficult. The fires at Ground Zero lit up the night sky, and acrid smoke drifted up Manhattan, seeping into our apartment on 67th Street, only a few miles north. The smell grew unbearable, a constant reminder of the tragedy unfolding downtown. The next morning, September 12, was eerily silent, broken only by the roar of F-16 jets patrolling overhead. Park Avenue, usually bustling, was deserted, resembling an apocalyptic movie. Outside my second-floor apartment, I opened the curtain to the sight of a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a Humvee, manned by soldiers from the 82nd Airborne. As I walked down the stairs, through the lobby and towards Park Avenue a soldier stopped me. They were limiting pedestrian traffic but offered to escort my daughter across the street to school. I later made my way to the office, one of the few people on the streets, and learned that several of my daughter’s kindergarten classmates had not been picked up the previous evening, spending the night with school administrators—a painful moment that brought the tragedy home. Those parents, and many other fathers and or mothers were victims that day.

In the days that followed, there were challenges and moments of pride. Our trading floors, located in Midtown, was the first to open on September 17, 2001, a testament to the city’s resilience. Our teams played a vital role in reviving the financial markets, processing trades, and hosting firms such as Sandler O'Neil despite the loss of critical infrastructure downtown. The determination of New Yorkers, the strength of families facing unimaginable grief, and the courage of first responders—firefighters, police, and medical workers—left a lasting impression. I was deeply grateful to have escaped personal loss and felt profound respect for those on the front lines, whose bravery echoed the stories my father shared from his time in war. It was a glimpse of that kind of sacrifice, and it’s as close as I ever hope to come.