Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, the stories of people who narrowly avoided being in or near New York’s World Trade Centre continue to emerge — including those of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, former senator Mitt Romney and property leaseholder Larry Silverstein.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda hijackers seized four commercial aircraft. Two were flown into the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan, another struck the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed. In New York, both towers collapsed within two hours of the first impact, claiming the lives of people from a wide range of backgrounds and occupations.
September 11 near misses in the Twin Towers
Lutnick, who was then chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, normally arrived at his desk on the 105th floor of the North Tower by 6am. But his wife asked him to take their son Kyle to school on what was his first day of kindergarten.
“So it was my son Kyle’s first day of kindergarten,” Lutnick told NPR in 2016. His phone repeatedly rang without connecting that morning. He later discovered that his brother Gary had been trying to reach him to say goodbye. Gary had gone to work as usual and was among 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who died.
Silverstein had signed a 99-year lease on the Twin Towers only weeks earlier. He usually held breakfast meetings at Windows on the World, the restaurant on the North Tower’s 106th floor, but his wife had arranged a dermatologist appointment for him that morning.
“You learn early on to say, ‘Yes, dear,’” he recalled. His children, Roger and Lisa, were also running late for the same meeting, while his aide Geoffrey Wharton left breakfast early and took an elevator down at 8.44am, two minutes before the first plane hit. No one else at the restaurant that morning survived.
Michael Lomonaco, the restaurant’s executive chef, was on the concourse level having his glasses adjusted when the first aircraft struck. “It saved my life,” he said. More than 30 members of his kitchen staff were killed, and he later raised nearly $25 million for the families of restaurant workers.
Jim Pierce, a managing director at Aon Corporation and a cousin of former president George W Bush, had been due to attend a meeting on one of the South Tower’s upper floors. When the gathering became too large for the room, it was moved at the last minute to a nearby building.
Twelve people were not told about the change and 11 died. Pierce watched the second plane hit from the neighbouring building. “I knew we were under attack,” he said, describing people falling from the towers and the disorder below.
Romney, who was then president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics, had planned to announce the Games’ torchbearers at a press conference near the World Trade Centre. A dispute in Congress over funding for Olympic security kept him in Washington instead.
“We had planned to be in New York City on the 11th,” he wrote. “Our team had planned an elaborate press conference adjacent to the World Trade Center at Battery Park.”
Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, ran a charity from the 101st floor of the North Tower. She missed a meeting after an interview overran. “I was meant to be there that morning,” she wrote. A doll used as the charity’s mascot, Little Red, was later found in the rubble and is now displayed at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
Jimmy Dunne, co-founder of investment bank Sandler O’Neill & Partners, was expected to be with colleagues on the 104th floor of the South Tower. Instead, he was 50 miles north attempting to qualify for a golf championship. Sixty-six of the firm’s 171 employees died, and Dunne continues to mark his golf ball with a “Q” for colleague Christopher Quackenbush, who did not escape.
Two future collaborators were also booked on American Airlines Flight 11, which became the first aircraft to hit the North Tower. Mark Wahlberg cancelled his seat a week earlier to attend the Toronto Film Festival, while Seth MacFarlane missed the flight by minutes after his travel agent gave him the wrong departure time.
MacFarlane later recalled: “I said, ‘Yeah, I’m booked on Flight 11.’” Wahlberg was criticised after telling Men’s Journal that, had he been aboard, “it wouldn’t have went down like it did”; he later apologised for the remark.
