NEW YORK (Reuters) – On September 11, 2001, property mogul Larry Silverstein's dreams seemed to be destroyed.
Just six weeks earlier he won a 99-year lease costing $3.2 billion for the World Trade Center, including the twin towers that were destroyed by two hijacked jets.
Silverstein and his wife Klara, then 70 and 68, wondered if they should retire and travel around the world or undertake the biggest project of their lives.
"I can't make this decision alone. I'll do whatever you want me to do," Silverstein recalled telling his wife.
"She said, 'You know, you're not going to be happy doing anything else. So, why don't you get on with rebuilding the trade center,'" he said. "And she said it just like that."
Silverstein, a pianist and drummer who graduated from the High School of Music and Art and New York University, met his wife in the summer of 1951 and they married in 1956.
He says she saved his life on Sept 11 by insisting he keep a doctor's appointment and forgo his daily routine of starting his day at the Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center's north tower.
About half the staff at Silverstein Properties had moved into temporary offices on the 89th floor of the north tower, while permanent offices were being constructed on the 91st floor.
That morning, Silverstein got a telephone call from the captain of his yacht, which was docked in New York, to turn on the television.
He said he thought immediately of his employees and of his two younger daughters who worked with him.
"My first thoughts were of abject horror in terms of impact on my family and my people because my people are my extended family," he said. "It was brutal and we had to wait several hours ... to find out who made it out and who didn't."
Four of his employees died.
Over the past decade, government officials tried to oust him from the World Trade Center rebuilding project, he battled 22 insurance firms who did not want to pay out policies on the buildings and he missed one of the biggest real estate booms ever in New York.
His family has inscribed a message on one of the long benches in a small park in front of World Trade Center 7, the first building completed after the attacks. It reads simply, "Dedicated to those who survived September 11, 2001."
(Editing by Mark Egan, Jerry Norton and Ellen Wulfhorst)
0 comments:
Post a Comment