It is a heartbreaking distinction, and one no company would ever choose to carry: on September 11, Cantor Fitzgerald suffered the greatest loss of life of any single organization.
The financial firm was based high in the World Trade Center’s North Tower, with offices spanning the 101st to 105th floors—above the impact zone where American Airlines Flight 11 hit at 8:46 a.m. Of Cantor Fitzgerald’s 960 employees in New York, 658 were killed, along with 50 contractors and visitors. Euro Brokers, now part of Cantor, lost another 61 people that day.
Behind those figures were names, faces, families and futures. Edie is part of the Cantor Fitzgerald family. Her own office was on the 101st floor, but she was not in the building that morning. Her brother Gary was on the 104th floor and did not survive. Their brother Howard, then Cantor Fitzgerald’s chairman and CEO, lived because he had taken his son to his first day of kindergarten.
Three days later, on September 14, 2001, Edie and Howard helped create the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, a lifeline for the families left behind. Many of the people they supported began as strangers. In time, they became something much closer: family.
Caroline arrived at Cantor Fitzgerald in 2002. During the company’s annual Charity Day—an event that supports hundreds of charities worldwide as well as disaster relief efforts—she often asked the celebrities, athletes and coworkers in attendance a simple but powerful question: “Where were you on September 11?”
At first, the answers sounded much like her own memories: commuting to work, bringing children to school, moving through an ordinary morning that would soon become unimaginable. As the years passed, the responses shifted. People remembered being in high school chemistry class, middle school homeroom or first grade. Eventually came the answer that marked a new era: “I wasn’t born yet,” a young actor once said. Before long, volunteers at 9/11 memorial events had no personal memory of the attacks at all.
Every September 11, the country repeats the promise to “always remember.” Social media fills with #NeverForget. Yet time has a way of softening even the sharpest collective memory.
Edie has often reflected on the process of arranging Cantor Fitzgerald’s names for the National September 11 Memorial, placing them with care and meaning. There was a time when she could recall every person the firm lost. Nearly 25 years later, some names take longer to reach. And if those who lived through the grief feel memory slipping, the question becomes even more urgent: what will remain for generations who know September 11 only through history?
With the 25th anniversary approaching, we decided the voices of Cantor’s families needed to speak directly to the next generations.
To preserve these memories, Cantor families submitted 176 essays, letters, poems and recollections for “The Families: 9/11 Anthology of Love, Loss and Lessons of Resilience.” We were profoundly changed by their determination and hope.
Burn survivors write of gratitude. A West Point cadet who lost his brother channels his grief into a PTSD program for veterans. A father embraces deep faith after losing two sons. Mothers describe raising children with joy against impossible odds.
And we heard from people who weren’t yet born, like the son who never met his father and now finds a path forward even as he grapples with generational grief.
Others write candidly about addiction and turning pain into purpose through service and philanthropy.
We know first-hand that revisiting the heartbreak of Sept. 11 is not easy. In working on the anthology, Edie recalled 20-hour days writing thousands of checks by hand to widows and new mothers, building support groups and family networks from nothing and attending too many funerals. Returning to her last call with Gary is always painful.
The true gift of “The Families” is in the lessons its contributors share: how to show up for each other, find a mission bigger than your own pain, and allow joy and grief to share a sentence. Those lessons belong to anyone who has had to keep living after losing someone.
Edith Lutnick is Co-Founder, president and executive director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund. Caroline Aiken Koster is general counsel of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund and a senior Cantor Fitzgerald corporate lawyer. “The Families: 9/11 Anthology of Love, Loss and Lessons of Resilience” is out now and all proceeds from the book benefit the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund.
