A few days after the World Trade Center was destroyed I heard on the radio that Cantor Fitzgerald, which had traded bonds on its 101st, 103rd, 104th and 105th floors, had six hundred missing employees, and needed volunteers to help run a support centre for their families. I put my name on a list. They asked me to come to the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel on Monday, 17 September, by which time 'missing' had changed, in everyone's minds, to 'presumed dead'.

I got to the Plaza at nine, and a tall, blonde Englishwoman, dressed completely in white, told me to stand by the two elevators that brought people to the ballroom and be a 'greeter'. She said I should say 'Can I help you?' when people arrived. I was to make sure they signed in, so we knew who had come; I should try to answer any question asked of me; and if people were overcome with emotion I should find a professional counsellor, who would be wearing a name tag with an orange circle on it. My name tag had a blue circle on it. There were plain name tags for the victims' families.

LRB 19 September 2002 | PDF Download