After the first plane hit the North Twin Tower in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, Kam Wong, then the CFO of the $2.5 billion Municipal Credit Union, decided that all employees must evacuate the headquarters building just a few yards from the Ground Zero site.
“I was standing in my corner office when the phone rang and it was one of my directors asking if I was OK,” Wong recalled. “Just when I was telling him that I evacuated the building, I saw the second plane hit. I could not believe it. The fireball was so tremendous. It was coming toward our windows, sheets of paper were shooting like bullets into our windows. That’s the kind of force I cannot even describe to you. There are just no words for it.”
That tragic day that changed America and the world will be somberly commemorated on Sunday, Sept. 11, the 15th anniversary, in New York, Washington, D.C. and in Shanksville, Pa.
Cliff Rosenthal, former executive director of the National Federation of Community Development, was in his office overlooking the East River less than a mile from the World Trade Center site on 9/11.
Rosenthal, who now works as a consultant, still chokes up with raw emotions when remembering that dark day and its aftermath.
“It’s still pretty visceral for a lot of us,” Rosenthal said. “There is no one in New York who was more than one or two people removed from the disaster. Either they were down there or they lost a relative or they knew somebody who did or they were thrown out of work for months and months because of it. There were very few people who were untouched by 9/11 in one way or another.”
In the Sept. 7 edition of the CU Times, read more about remembering 9/11 and how MCU managed through a unique and dire crisis.
