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Finding solace and a new beginning in Wisconsin It was early on a bright, cloudless morning in New York City. Glenda Noel-Ney, a successful businesswoman, was rushing through her morning routine, trying to get her 9-year-old son Pierce to school while hurrying to make a 9 a.m. meeting at her downtown office. Already running late, Noel-Ney hopped on a different train than the one she normally took into Manhattan from Brooklyn. As she stepped off the subway, she felt an impact beneath her. It was 9:03 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001. Her first thought was that a bomb had gone off nearby. But as she rushed toward the stairs, a man grabbed her arm. “Ma’am, you don’t want to go outside,” he warned her. Annoyed, she pushed him aside. As she emerged from the subway tunnel into the warm fall sun, she couldn’t help but marvel at what a beautiful day it was. But then she heard a strange crackle in the air. When she looked up, her heart stopped. In front of her, a huge billow of smoke poured from the World Trade Center. Angry flames licked outward from the building. To her horror, Noel-Ney realized people were dangling from the building. “It was one of those completely surreal moments,” Noel-Ney says. “I stood there, just expecting a Hollywood director to come from somewhere and yell ‘Cut!’” As she struggled to take everything in, she slowly began walking through the streets of downtown New York. When she stopped, a man standing next to her put his arms around her. Together they learned a plane hijacked by terrorists had flown directly into the World Trade Center, causing the carnage before them. When people trapped in the building began jumping from the windows, he told her not to look. When her cell phone didn’t work, he let her use his. Even though her office at the American Express headquarters building, where she worked as manager of philanthropic programs, was directly across the street from the World Trade Center, Noel-Ney still felt compelled to go there. But the man holding her by coincidence, an engineer who had worked on some of the downtown buildings, told her the angle of the World Trade Center indicated it was about to fall. She should get out of the downtown area, he told her. Although she refused to let herself believe that the landmark towers she, as a native New Yorker, had grown up looking at nearly all her life were possibly going to drop, something in the man’s voice made Noel-Ney listen. Confusion and clogged telephone lines had prevented Noel-Ney from contacting Pierce’s school to let him know she was OK. By the time she got there, Pierce was in his classroom crying. He was sure something had happened to her. The frightening events left both Noel-Ney and her young son shaken. Over the next several days, the mother and son began an ongoing conversation about what had happened. Even though Noel-Ney had not been hurt, she was a single parent and the thought of losing her deeply upset Pierce. He repeatedly asked, “What will I do if something happens?” His questions reverberated with Noel-Ney, causing her to begin rethinking her priorities. “To have this conversation with such a young child is very difficult,” Noel-Ney says. Noel-Ney herself struggled for some time to make sense of the events of that day. More than 4,000 American Express employees were in Lower Manhattan the morning of Sept. 11, and 11 lost their lives. Eight more were hospitalized and dozens more lost family members, friends and loved ones. The American Express headquarters building also sustained considerable damage, forcing thousands of employees to work from interim locations, including Noel-Ney, who started working from her apartment in Brooklyn. As part of American Express’ Philanthropy division, Noel-Ney’s job after the attacks was to coordinate the company’s response to the tragedy. |
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