At the beginning, there were moments when things fell apart. "People had breakdowns, people fainted," Olson said. "You sobbed, and then you got on with it."
But she still doesn't sleep very well, she said. "The ghosts come to get you at night. There's so much to think about: what you miss and all that needs to be done here." She finds considerable comfort at work, she says. "This was a tribal event -- something happened to our tribe. And it helps to be here with people who feel the same pain."
But for Scott Wall, one of the few surviving Cantor bond traders, about the only thing in his work life that is unchanged is Cantor's name on his business card. He once traded corporate bonds in Manhattan, surrounded by people he'd known for almost a decade. He now sells convertible bonds from an office in Darien, among people he had barely met before Sept. 11.
"I remember hearing the president say that we should all go back to work, and thinking that I didn't have any work to go back to," Wall said. "I'm 38. I just hope it's not too late to make a change."
Howard Lutnick, the chairman of Cantor, has also found his workday much changed. Once known for his combative arm-wrestling in a competitive business, Lutnick was suddenly surrounded by hundreds of grieving families who needed gentle handling. He took a self-taught crash course in the politics of philanthropy, meeting with the head of the American Red Cross to argue successfully for immediate cash assistance for families who lost breadwinners in the attacks.
Lutnick lost his only brother, Gary, in the attacks. His grief and shock were apparent right after the disaster in a spate of tearful media interviews. But in recent weeks, after criticism from some employees surfaced publicly, Lutnick has pulled out of the spotlight, refusing interviews and spending time talking quietly with families at a series of informational gatherings Cantor has held around New York City. Marber was stranded at a golf resort in Ohio when the attack occurred. Otherwise, he almost certainly would have perished along with 130 others on the stock trading desk he ran. Isolated in his hotel room, he coped with his hopeless, impotent grief by making lists of what the firm would need to re-open.
When he got back to New York on Sept. 13, after a 12-hour van trip, he slept for a few hours and went to work. By Sept. 17, when the stock markets re-opened, his jury-rigged trading team was ready.
The trading line held, and the work got done. But it is not like any trading desk he's ever run, Marber said. The easy laughter, the teasing banter that lubricated the tension, is gone.
"We had such a well-oiled machine," he said, with a tone of almost palpable longing. "Everything was in its place and everything worked, and if it didn't, we got it fixed in five minutes and got back to work. I want that back."
The only way to get it back is to build it again, he said. He is hopeful -- he expects the firm to hold its own for the rest of this year and be ready to grow again next year.
Peter DaPuzzo, a Wall Street veteran who is Cantor's vice chairman, has attended 32 funerals, and his wife has been to 18 more. Seeing the young widows and solemn toddlers breaks his heart, he said.
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