Alumni, Arches

The Towers' Long Shadow

I was working in the World Trade Center 20 years ago when the planes hit. I got out without a scratch—but the aftereffects linger to this day.

How I came to be in Tower One of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, is a story that starts at Puget Sound. I joined a fraternity house—Beta house—and in my sophomore year, my fraternity brothers told me about a scholarship opportunity through Kemper Insurance. I ended up doing a couple summers with Kemper, and then after graduation they offered me a trainee position in Chicago. I took the job, and stayed with that same department for 25 years.

In 1985, I met my wife, Laura, who also worked at Kemper. In 1990 we transferred with Kemper to L.A. with our 2-year-old son, Sean, and newborn, Ryan; after four years we were transferred back to Illinois, and then in 1998 I moved to the Summit, N.J., office, outside of New York. In February of 2001, I was transferred to our offices in the World Trade Center.

"I was just an insurance guy. I just went to work on a beautiful September day."

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I left my house in Berkeley Heights, N.J., around 6:30 a.m. for the Newark train station, and parked my car under the tracks in a parking garage. I took the PATH train to the World Trade Center and got to my office on the 35th floor of Building One, the North Tower. The day had crystal-clear skies and the temperature was beautifully mild, one of the prettiest days we had had in a long time. At around 8:00 a.m., I set up my laptop in the docking station and logged in. I got a cup of coffee, came back to my office, and had a quick chat with my assistant, Nancy, whom I had hired about six weeks earlier. I checked my emails and started to draft an announcement about a colleague who would be transferring to New York from our Chicago office to work at the World Trade Center.

Around 8:45 I went to talk with Nancy, and it was then that we heard a big bang and felt the building shake and sway drastically away from the Hudson. The skies outside my window were suddenly dark. Someone thought it was an earthquake; I said it must be a boiler explosion or something on a higher floor. We heard a slow, loud, screeching noise as the building continued bending—it was the girders, straining to stay upright. The lights started to go out. I looked out the window to see paper, office supplies, the occasional desk flying past.

I told Nancy we should get out of there and took her by the arm and walked her to the exit stairs. There were several people already working their way down the stairs. I pushed Nancy into the doorway flow and went back into the office to check for others. I saw Dennis Kane, our president, on his cell phone trying to get ahold of his son, who was supposed to be at a meeting at Windows on the World, on the top floor of our tower. (Later, I would find out that his son was fine—he was delayed getting to the meeting, and that delay saved his life.)

I continued moving through the office as people packed up to leave the building. Back at my own office, I debated whether to take my laptop. I decided that it would take too long to shut down properly, and I was convinced I’d be coming back anyway, so I grabbed my Blackberry and started to leave. I told Dick Radsch, our chief legal counsel and good friend, “Hey, Dick, we gotta get out of here,” and he said, “Probably a good idea”—and then proceeded to pack his briefcase, slowly and methodically. When he finally finished, we rounded the corner to the main hallway and saw smoke and smelled a strange smell coming from the elevator doors. (We later learned the smoke was actually drywall dust, and the smell was aviation fuel.) I started to get more concerned. I looked down the hall and saw our claims manager pointing at the windows, and I saw the reflection of our building with the top few stories aflame. We knew we had to get out—now.

"We heard a slow, loud, screeching noise as the building continued bending—it was the girders, straining to stay upright."

The stairwell was crowded, but everyone was calm and politely allowed us into to the horde that was moving, slowly and methodically, down 35 floors’ worth of stairs. Around the 22nd or 23rd floor, I saw a man in a wheelchair and a friend standing next to him. Several of us offered to carry the man in the wheelchair down, but he declined—his instructions were to wait for the fire department to come rescue him. A week later, I saw a short piece on TV about a man in a wheelchair and his friend who died together, waiting for help. He was in Building One, around the 22nd floor.

We continued down the stairs slowly and calmly—I still can’t get over how calm we were—and around the 18th floor, we felt the building shake sharply and heard a screeching noise. We later learned that that was Building Two being struck by a plane. Not long after, we saw our first person going up the stairs—he was a firefighter, and he just looked straight ahead. People were all asking what had happened, and he said nothing, just kept walking up the stairs. When I looked at his face, all I saw were what seemed like lifeless eyes. It was as if he knew he was walking to his death.

We made it to the plaza level, where we were directed to the side exit. I saw all kinds of debris in the air and on the ground—I think I saw a seat, which could have easily been an airplane passenger seat, though I can’t be sure because at that point we still didn’t know what was going on. We hurried over to the West Side Highway pedestrian bridge, and looked up to see the upper floors of both buildings on fire. We rushed through Winter Garden Atrium to the marina outside, where we picked our way through the crowd and found some other Kemper employees. It became an impromptu gathering point, as we took quick review of who was in the office and where they were the last time anyone had seen them.

I looked up at the towers, smoke billowing out of both, and realized with disbelief that people were falling from the upper floors. I couldn’t help but wonder, What if that were me? What would it have taken to take that final leap? What was going through their minds as they fell?

Dave and Laura Kelly for fall Arches 2021

Dave ’80 and Laura Kelly

Suddenly, police showed up and told everyone to disperse; we didn’t know why, but guessed that they were trying to shield us from the horror we were seeing. People set off in various directions. Dick and I saw the ferry and figured, Why not try that? We didn’t know where it would take us; we just knew it would get us off the island. As we were in line to get on, my phone rang—it was my neighbor, who transferred me to my wife so I could tell her I was OK. “Make sure you call Dick’s wife,” I told her, because Dick couldn’t get cell service.

As the ferry workers—out of habit—asked for tickets, the captain yelled, “Forget the tickets and the count! Just load.” Dick and I got a seat on the top deck; as we were halfway across the Hudson to Hoboken, we looked back and saw Tower Two come down, with another ferry behind us racing away from the cloud of dust and debris. I could only wonder, and hope, that everyone got away from our gathering place OK.

Ten years later, they made a short documentary about the evacuation—the largest boat evacuation in U.S. history. The film was called Boatlift, and Tom Hanks narrated it.

Once in Hoboken, Dick and I got on the next train to Newark, where my car was parked. As we checked out of the parking garage, the guy at the gate said a few kind words about being glad to see me again. We both knew that some of the cars would never be picked up that night.

I drove Dick to Summit, and as we pulled up to his house, his wife ran down the driveway to us; after a hug, I drove on home to Berkeley Heights. I walked in the house and into the family room, where Laura hugged me and I cried in her arms. (To this day, I still think Laura had the tougher morning on Sept. 11: She spent several hours watching the coverage and fielding calls from panicked friends and relatives, without knowing whether I was OK.)

I had something to eat (a sandwich, I think?) and said I had to go to the local office, where I knew my boss was working as point man during the crisis. Laura pushed me to stay home, but I was sure the boss needed to know what we had learned about who was where—we were confident that the 35th floor was cleared, and we had had sightings of many other co-workers, but we didn’t know whether everyone had gotten away safely when the buildings collapsed. So I went to the local office, where a couple of managers and my boss were on the phone, and I took a phone list and started calling people, trying to confirm they were safe. We all got nothing but busy signals. In hindsight, I think they were just letting me feel like I was doing something. We all left a little while later and went back to our homes. My two kids came around the corner and gave me a hug; Sean and Ryan were in middle school at the time, and they had been at the next-door neighbors’ house. Then I went inside and had a drink. Or two.

"As we were halfway across the Hudson to Hoboken, we looked back and saw Tower Two come down, with another ferry behind us racing away from the cloud of dust and debris."

That night the phone rang constantly with calls from work, including one from a grief counselor, and from family. During the work calls it was decided that the management team would meet the next morning in our Princeton office, about an hour away. So we went back to work on Sept. 12, working on putting the company back together. There had been 225 Kemper employees on the 35th and 36th floors of the North Tower, and all of them got out safely. They were back at desks—at three different locations—with email and phone the following Monday, the 17th.

It took me about a year to get back to work in New York City. We leased a new location in midtown and I eventually moved back in September 2002—and then, six months later, Kemper went out of business. (The Sept. 11 attacks were hard on insurance companies, to say the least.) In November 2003, I moved to XL Insurance in New York City to start up a risk management division with some of my Kemper colleagues. My office was on the 27th floor, and the conference room overlooked Ground Zero. I spent the next 10 years in that building, with that bird’s-eye view of that hole. I spent a lot of time describing to clients and visitors what happened that day in 2001. I’d show them a diagram of what was at the World Trade Center, so they could orient themselves looking down, and I’d show them the overlay of where the debris from the airplanes ended up: “See that building eight blocks over? That’s where they found one of the engines.”

On occasion we watched the site go into lockdown when workers found human remains as they were demolishing buildings. There was one building, on the south side of Tower Two I believe, that when they got up in the upper floors, they found bones, so they had to stop. And during street construction, they might open a new manhole cover or a drainpipe and find human remains. If they found body parts of any type, everything shut down.

Because I worked in the insurance industry, part of my job after 9/11 involved spending a lot of time thinking about terrorist attacks. That day caused significant changes in how workers’ compensation insurance is regulated, and every carrier was now required to report detailed statistics on how many insured employees were covered by each of its policies. Key locations—ones with, say, over 100 employees at one address—were run against defined terrorist scenarios, and we had to try to estimate our possible losses if, for example, a 10-ton truck bomb went off at a company’s headquarters in downtown New York City or a manufacturing plant outside of Portland. So for every large location, we would run numbers, how many would die, get hurt, become permanently disabled, or live. We did that every year, for every account and every prospective account. I think over the years it took a toll on me.

"I’ll be honest: I have always been disappointed with how emotional I’ve been about 9/11. After all, I got out of that building. I survived."

In 2006, I was asked to join a Columbia University committee on how to improve escape routes in high-rise buildings. There were 11 other WTC survivors with me on that committee, and we met every couple of weeks for 15 months. The researchers were trying to design safer, more effective evacuation plans for high-rise buildings, and it actually did change some of the building protocols in New York City, in terms of fire drills and designated meeting places to go to in an emergency.

I thought I was doing a lot of good stuff. I thought I was getting a handle on things. I was doing OK mentally, thanks to my wife and family and great co-workers.

Then my father died.

He died on Mother’s Day, May 10, 2009, in Philadelphia. And sometime after that, anxieties cropped up all over the place for me. I suddenly was afraid to fly. I mean, 40% of my job is flying all over the country, so this wasn’t going to sell well. And I was suddenly real emotional—I’m crying at Ellen on TV, for God’s sake. Somebody’s giving a teacher an award, and I’m crying. I mean, I’m still very emotional today. I get it. But I just couldn’t handle the anxiety that I knew was totally irrational. I was really upset with myself: Why are you freaking out about flying? Why are you freaking out about driving over this bridge?

I found a great doctor in Summit. I think Dr. Rose was about 80, and he was a very special person. He could prescribe drugs, but more importantly, he could talk. He really helped me. When I couldn’t understand why I was having so much anxiety, why I was crying so much, Dr. Rose said, “The bottom line is your level of dealing with junk, before 9/11, was down here,” gesturing with his hand. “After 9/11 you had to deal with this much more,” as he put his hand a foot higher. “And now your level-set is up here. So, you’re running day to day at Mach 5. And then your dad died.” He made me see that, yeah, I went over the top when my dad died—but he also made me realize that it really started back on 9/11.

I’ll be honest: I have always been disappointed with how emotional I’ve been about 9/11. My father was in World War II; practically everybody I know has been to Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan. And I’m a sniveling idiot for one stupid day? So, when Dr. Rose talked about PTSD and all that stuff, I didn’t buy it at first. After all, I got out of that building. I survived. My wife says that when I walked into the family room that day, there was not a mark on my clean, crisp French blue dress shirt and tie, not a mark on my pants. She had been seeing on TV people covered in dust. To outward appearances, my experience was a piece of cake. But Dr. Rose helped me see that PTSD is a real thing, and he got me to a better place.

Dr. Rose died later that year, and I spent the next seven years self-medicating and probably being a horrible husband and father. I was fed up. I just couldn’t take the commute anymore and work was not as enjoyable as it had been. And I had loved my job. I took early retirement in 2014, right before my 56th birthday, sold the house, and moved to Florida. I looked for a therapist or doctor who wasn’t just a drug pusher, and I just couldn’t bond with anybody. In January 2019, I found a counselor who I hit it off with, and she and I made some serious progress. For a while, I thought I was done with it—I felt like I had a handle on things, I wasn’t taking all kinds of pills, I wasn’t drinking all the time. I stopped seeing her last summer.

Then I had a health scare last fall and had to go into the hospital for two weeks, including exploratory surgery. The first week was the 9/11 anniversary—and because of COVID and the no-visitor policy, I spent 9/11 in the hospital alone, without my wife, without my sons. During that stay, I had a panic attack. It’s the worst thing, because you absolutely know you’re fine, and yet… I went out and found an intern and said, “I need to see a doctor and they need to get me some kind of medication. I am not being rational. I am having a panic attack.” It was hard to convince him. I said, “I’ve never felt this way. So I know I need help.” And after a very frustrating period, I finally got help, I got medication, I calmed down, and I went through the procedure. It turns out I had a tumor that was causing all kinds of other problems.

After that, I went running back to my counselor. I see her monthly now, and she’s been fabulous. She’s been my level-set. But my rock has been my wife and sons.

I sometimes think about how, immediately following 9/11, several people—my father and others—would check on me from time to time. Many of them had been in the military, and I’d be like, “For you to worry about me is ridiculous. You went through so much more of this.” They would all tell me the same thing: “It’s OK to be upset. We signed up for the military—we trained for the military. We were exposed to explosions and bomb blasts, and we knew what we were getting into.” Whereas I was just an insurance guy. I just went to work on a beautiful September day.

David Kelly ’80 lives in Naples, Fla.