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PNC's Stuart Hoffman and his wife Jody experienced Sept. 11 personally.
Jody and Stuart Hoffman recall the morning of Sept. 11
James M. Kubus, Tribune-Review
That doesn't mean she won't have flashbacks of fleeing her hotel room down 19 flights of stairs at the base of the World Trade Center complex on that brilliant morning turned macabre nightmare, or of clinging for three hours on the arm of a stranger while joining thousands of dazed New Yorkers on a surreal march out of Lower Manhattan.
Hoffman and her husband, Stuart Hoffman, senior vice president and chief economist for PNC Financial Services Group, left New York Sept. 12 with nothing but the clothes on their back and the key cards to a hotel room that lay in the monstrous pile of smoldering rubble. In May, they returned to attend a wedding.
While there they were drawn to the Trade Center site to witness for themselves the scale of the destruction and to mourn those whose died so mercilessly, and to retrace their paths from that day as they tried desperately to reunite amid the chaotic din.
Stuart Hoffman did not want to talk about his experience soon after the event, instead having PNC issue a press release with some of the details of that day. But he and Jody agreed to speak about it recently.
The days leading up to Sept. 11 couldn't have been better for the Hoffmans. Stuart was co-chairing the annual meeting of the National Association of Business Economists in New York in the World Trade Center Marriott Hotel, a 21-story structure attached to the South Tower.
Jody didn't always accompany her husband on these trips, but this year decided to meet up with her sister from Cincinnati and her daughter from Boston to celebrate her 50th birthday. While Stuart attended to the conference, the women enjoyed the sights, sounds and shopping of New York.
"We decided to make it a festive weekend," she said. "I was having a nice time, and I don't get to see my sister too often."
By Tuesday the conference was winding down. Stuart left their room to attend the final breakfast, while Jody prepared to meet her sister for a final day in the city.
The breakfast speaker had just begun his remarks on the hotel's mezzanine level when Hoffman said he was interrupted by a muffled boom. The chandelier in the room trembled and the lights briefly dimmed.
"We all just sort of looked at each other," he said. "By instinct, but not in a panic, people started collectively leaving the room. Nobody knew what was happening."
Hotel staff funneled everybody outside into a plaza. Hoffman began hearing that a plane had collided with the North Tower. He said he envisioned a light aircraft having struck the North Tower's massive antenna.
He crossed West Boulevard to try to get a better look as emergency vehicles began rolling into the plaza.
"I looked up and saw this tower engulfed in a ring of fire," he said.
As he stared transfixed at the raging fire, he heard the drone of an approaching jet engine. Out of the corner of his eye he could pick up a large plane appearing and disappearing behind a column of skyscrapers, before banking and ripping into the South Tower.
"Panic set it everywhere," he said.
He immediately thought of Jody. Had she left yet to meet her sister?
Jody had just emerged from the shower and had the Today Show on the television. Their suite faced the North Tower.
Just then she heard what sounded like a violent crack of thunder. The room shook and the television surged with static. Peering out the window she could see a shower of debris, some hitting the glass in front of her.
"I grabbed a T-shir and sandals and left. You knew there was something horrible happening," she said.
As she made her way down the hotel stairs she could hear people talking about a repeat of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. As she got to the lower floors, the stairwell became crowded.
Exiting the lobby, Jody found people outside bloodied, crying, vomiting, screaming. She hoped Stuart had gotten out, but wasn't certain if his breakfast might have been in a restaurant at the top of the towers.
At a bank across the street, she tried to call Stuart on his cell phone, not realizing cell phone transmission was cut in lower Manhattan. She left a message, then called her daughter to let her know she was alright and to turn on the television.
After she hung up, the second plane hit.
"The bank was evacuated within seconds," she said. "I didn't know which way to go."
She followed a throng on a 45-minute trek to Battery Park, a walk that normally takes about 10 minutes.
Once in Battery Park, she spotted somebody carrying one of the green tote bags from the conference. Relieved to see something familiar, she queried the group about Stuart's whereabouts. They said they didn't know for sure where he was, but assured her everyone from the conference had gotten out.
In the meantime, Stuart had reached a land line and called his office. His assistant retrieved his cell phone messages and was able to tell him that Jody had made it out.
He started heading back toward the Trade Center in search of Jody when the South Tower came crashing down in an unforgettable earthshattering roar.
"Once I could believe my eyes I turned and started running," Stuart said.
He headed west while his wife was heading east, about to be swallowed by the smoky cloud of debris.
In Battery Park, the situation turned to mayhem.
"I velcroed myself onto this one man," said Jody, who was in the path of the debris cloud.
The Battery Park throng began moving up FDR Boulevard. Jody, her protector and the thousands of others were forced to cross and re-cross concrete barriers in the road several times, as emergency vehicles fought through in the opposite direction toward the remaining tower. Her loose fitting sandles kept slipping off.
Police tried to herd people toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Jody's nameless companion said he was not going to Brooklyn. She had no intention of letting go of him. He told her not to look back as they kept pushing toward Midtown.
But she could not ignore the sound of the second tower falling, turning momentarily in incredulity, before being tugged forward again. They heard jets circling overhead. More terrorists? No, it was our military circling over the city. No one spoke.
Each block, the crowd thinned a little more. By 1:15 p.m. they reach the man's apartment at 54th Street and Sutton Avenue, where they were greeted by his relieved wife and news of the other attacks at the Pentagon and Somerset County.
Jody called her niece's apartment , about 15 blocks away. Stuart was there. He had commandeered a limousine driver to get him there after trying unsuccessfully to reach of Jody on her cell phone, which she had left in the hotel.
They decide to stay where they're at for an hour to "detox."
"My feet were in pretty bad shape," Jody said.
The man, who she now learned was David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's, and his wife, agreed to walk with Jody to meet Stuart at a half-way point — Bloomingdales. She gave Jody a pair of her shoes.
"It was like being in Times Square on New Year's Eve all over New York. There were millions of people in the street," Stuart Hoffman said.
Reunited, Stuart attempted to book a hotel room. No vacancies.
He was able to track down PNC Chairman James Rohr, who was in town with a small PNC delegation for another event. The group had a room the Hoffmans could use at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
They watched President Bush's address that night at their niece's and began a 20-block trek to the hotel. Now the streets were deserted of people and cabs.
The next morning Hoffman bought a new shirt and headed into PNC's New York offices to check on world markets while Jody remained glued to the hotel T.V.
The company rented two vans for its employees to return to Pittsburgh. They left after a late dinner Wednesday night and arrived in Pittsburgh by 3 a.m. Thursday.
The Hoffmans were flooded with well wishing phone calls and e-mails from friends and colleagues.
"Being in Pittsburgh, for the first time I could feel safe again," Jody said. "Stuart carried on with his life again right away. I stayed home for a month. I didn't want to go anywhere."
On a recent morning, Jody Hoffman awoke to the sounds of a Wall Street wonk on the radio parsing the latest world market data — mundane fare in her household. It was only when he was identified as David Wyss at the end of the segment that she recognized her Sept. 11 guardian angel.
"Had he not been there, I don't know how I would have gotten through that day."
