Pausing to Remember
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Just as everyone of a certain age remembers what they were doing when President Kennedy was assassinated, so, too, does every New Yorker remember what happened three years ago on September 11.
Memorial observances of the last two anniversaries have been somewhat subdued because the rawness of grief was still sharp, but we are in danger of forgetting the horror that visited our city that late summer day.
Every so often, I catch a glimpse of a car’s bumper sticker with an image of the stricken Twin Towers that reads, “Never forget.” As long as I have the opportunity to remind New Yorkers about 9/11, I’ll do just that.
I went to the office of Drum Associates at 150 Broadway to interview Brian Drum, a unique entrepreneur whose commitment to the revival of downtown Manhattan is inspiring. Not only did Mr. Drum return his business to its same location just 300 yards from the former World Trade Center, but he kept his staff on salary even while he was unable to conduct any business.
Drum Associates is an executive search firm and is much more portable than many companies. Mr. Drum could have relocated anywhere and still retained his clientele. I asked him why he returned and he said, “You can’t cave in to that stuff. Abandoning downtown would have meant that the terrorists won.”
Mr. Drum was in his office that Tuesday and knew pretty quickly we were being attacked. Remembering the chaos that followed the 1993 WTC attack, he evacuated his office before the towers fell. He then managed to take the no. 6 train uptown to meet his son in Midtown. “When my son told me, ‘they’re gone’ I was in total disbelief. I never thought they would collapse.”
The question we all ask one another when discussing September 11 is, “Did you know anyone who died that day?” Inevitably, the answer is in the affirmative when it’s posed to someone who works so close to ground zero.
Mr. Drum remembers several acquaintances but the one individual he recalls in particular is Freddy Hoffmann, a Cantor Fitzgerald executive. On September 11, Mr. Drum had traveled in from New Jersey with Hofmann on the Path train and as they rode up that long escalator to the WTC, Hoffmann talked of having only two years until retirement.
“Freddy and I had a lot in common. We both lived in New Jersey. I had a second home in Pennsylvania. Freddy had a second home there, too,” Mr. Drum recalled.
“We’d meet and just make small talk about that but the thing that haunts me most about Freddy is that we both have daughters about the same age. I brought my daughter Carly into the business and he brought his to Cantor Fitzgerald. I think they were one of only two families that lost more than one member on 9/11.I see his wife occasionally socially and this still haunts me.”
Haunting is a good word to describe the impact of those attacks on many New Yorkers. As the years go by, our tears for those lost are being replaced by a clenching of teeth and narrowing of the eyes whenever we near that empty acreage in Lower Manhattan.
Brian Drum suspects that many of the buildings in the area will be turned into residential properties, but he hopes that when the towers are rebuilt that businesses will come back. “Where did all the companies who were in the World Trade Center go?” he asked. “Where are they now? Certainly many of the businesses are gone forever but that’s why the Towers must be rebuilt. It shouldn’t just be a memorial.”
Mr. Drum said that much more is needed to revitalize Lower Manhattan – and he isn’t talking about money as much as he is about attitude.
It also takes guts and compassion, which Brian Drum certainly had to keep his workers from joining the thousands of New Yorkers left unemployed by the murderous attacks. He kept his business afloat by pouring money into it for the lean years of 2002 and 2003. Now the economy is on the rebound and one can’t help but wish that the city had a thousand Brian Drums as committed to its recovery.
After I left Drum Associates, I took a walk down to the area around ground zero. Many businesses are still shuttered. The old coffee shop on the corner of Rector and Greenwich Street is gone, as is the entire building in which it was housed.
Yet streets are crowded with tourists and workers from the financial district catching express buses and ferries to their homes. Battery Park City is booming with new environmentally advanced structures sprouting up one after another. Century 21 is always crowded; “Law and Order” is filming in the area. The place is jumping.
We must never forget that 9/11 was not only a day of infamy, but also a day of miracles. Twenty-eight hundred innocents were murdered that day, but more than 25,000 escaped from the Twin Towers. Beautiful historic buildings surrounding the WTC were remarkably untouched.
Somebody up there likes us.