“H.L.” is Howard Lutnick, CEO of the bond trading firm
Cantor Fitzgerald. On the morning of
September 11 Lutnick – a man admired and feared in bond trading circles, who
oversaw a billion dollar trading company – took his young son to his first day
of Kindergarten rather than heading straight to his company offices on the 105th
floor of the North Tower. While at the
school his cell phone began vibrating nonstop.
A teacher finally told him, “A plane tore through the building”.
Lutnick raced to the towers.
What he saw was complete carnage:
people streaming out of the towers; flames and black, acrid smoke
billowing up and out, engulfing the floors where his company was housed. Within minutes the towers collapsed and with
them 657 of the 900 employees of Cantor Fitzgerald.
In the mere wisp of a minute, Lutnick lost his brother, his
closest friends, entire divisions of his company, almost every business record
the company possessed. Cantor Fitzgerald
owed $75 billion in bonds bought and not yet paid for. He had no way of paying the debt, no company.
He was covered in dust, bewildered, frightened, numb. Imagine – six funerals every day for over 100
straight days. He called his wife to
tell her he was alive and learned she had spoken to his brother only minutes
before the building collapsed.
What do you do when everything is gone, everything you
worked for destroyed? Lutnick couldn’t
get home that night. He walked to a
friend’s home – one of the few executives at Cantor Fitzgerald who survived - and
knocked. His friend answered. He had somehow survived, getting on an
elevator before the attack. He was
covered in blood. “Are you hurt?” “No”, his friend said. “It’s not my blood. I don’t know whose it is.”
So that night these two men talked. They had lost everything in their
professional careers and the people who were with them and believed in them
were slaughtered. Lutnick made a
decision. He could fail, he could die
penniless, but he wouldn’t let the lives of those people not count for
something. That night, amidst the
carnage and despair and fear of 9/11, Cantor Fitzgerald was reborn. Against impossible odds, tears, setbacks,
funerals, Cantor Fitzgerald rebuilt.
They became a stronger company after 9/11. And Howard Lutnick? He became a better man.
“What does that have to do with prison?” You might ask. Prison breaks you. It tears you apart. I look around this compound and see the men –
so many, too many – who have given up. They
believe in their heart that it is hopeless.
Their lives are and always will be defined by their crime, their screwed
up childhoods, families, and loves. They
have been letdown by friends, betrayed by spouses who said they loved them then
left when things got tough.
And then there are the ones who fight back, who find meaning
in their imprisonment and a reason to go forward. They will succeed in spite of what their
families think; in spite of the bias and prejudice they encounter. They will overcome.
Howard Lutnick is a hero. He’s no saint. He was and is a hard-driven, perhaps arrogant
CEO making way too much money for what he does.
But when he stared into the abyss of his future on 9/11 he found faith
and courage, two qualities that too often are in short supply.
Dr. Martin Luther King said,
“Faith is taking the next step when you can’t even see the
stairway.”
For me and so many other inmates, King’s words, Lutnick’s
actions, are motivation for us to overcome.
In everyone’s life there comes that day where evil is thrust upon you or
your sins catch up to you and you confront the mystery that Job saw. You can ask why or you can take the next step
forward. Faith, redemption, begins with
that step. 
No comments:
Post a Comment