Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:21 Five minute one was me recounting a speech that I made at the IPAA private capital conference. This was crazy. They wanted me to give a speech where I had to compare and contrast all of the private

0:34 equity funds. And I was like, there's no way. 'Cause if I get up there and I give an honest appraisal of something, somebody's getting pissed off, right? And if I just get up there and I cream

0:47 puff it all up, everybody's gonna say, you will see. I mean, what the hell, you know? And so I was like, no, I can't do that. And they go, oh, come on, please, please. So I got up there

0:57 and I compared every private equity fund to a different rock band. And so - Clever. Yeah, so I went natural gas partners are kind of like the Beatles. They really started all this. And NGP had

1:11 just sold 50 of itself to Barclays, the British bank. And I was like, you know, people are wondering why they did it. to, they said they did it to increase their global brand. Others said they

1:24 got a big payday and we're a little more cynical. I say they did it so they could talk in a British accent and not sounding more pompous than they already are. And that was like, I was just, I was

1:34 just, you know, making fun of everybody like that. So that's a good clever way to do it. So I love it. Not pissing people off, but making fun. Yeah. And I

1:46 got away with it because the final thing was, well, this obviously begs the question, who are you Chuck? So I sent the email to several friends and I think the winning response was Chuck, your

1:57 Kirk Cobain because you have absolutely no talent, but for some reason people like you.

2:05 I love it. Now, we were you at Rice. You were with brother Kenny. I was with Kenny. So I started in late '92, graduated in '96. Okay. So I was. I was undergrad 91, spent the semester at UT

2:24 Law School, but then defaulted the next year back into Rice Business School. So

2:31 I was late 92 to 94, but I was over at the Jones School. Gotcha. Which college were you? I was at Hanson. You were in Hanson. Yeah, okay. And I think Kenny was, and maybe he was Brown. He

2:43 was Brown, right? He was on the other side of campus. Yeah, I was in Brown too. I mean, all the way over there And y'all were like friends at Rice? We were. So we were one of three recruited

2:53 walk-ons for the football team. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Kenny showed up, I think, that fall weighing, like, what, 242. And at the end of the football season, it was 207. Yeah. Yeah.

3:06 Yeah. And he has the athletic ability of like Herman Monster. So he could only play offensive guard Yeah, it was fun. It was fun playing. I went in as a. recruited walk on for as a wide receiver.

3:22 Okay. You know, with my scrawny body. Right. You know, 5'10, 175, or whatever I was weighin'. You know, that was wet.

3:30 So I came in as a wide receiver. I guess my claim to fame was that I was able to catch a ball 'cause I wasn't as fast as many of the wide receivers out there, but man, I could catch the ball. Did

3:40 you play all four years? No, so I got injured the third week of the year It was actually terrible, it was. I tore my ACL in a bi-week before a division two game against Sam Houston State, so it

3:56 was just, you know, whammy after whammy after whammy knocking me down. So I was kind of done my football career to

4:06 call it that, was done pretty quickly. I came back my

4:10 sophomore year to try to play baseball. So that would have been, I would have come back The fall of '93. Okay. To my sophomore year and tried to play baseball and then re-injured the same ACL

4:22 injury. I don't know why. Yeah, so I just relegated to club sports after that and that was fine, that's fine. No, I got you. So Graham was coaching, right? Graham was coaching baseball, yep.

4:33 Yeah, and who was on that team? Well, so that was Jose Cruz Jr. Okay. Yeah, so that was that era, right? Yep, yep. 'Cause he, I mean, he was really the one that started it I mean, Graham

4:46 and Cruz Jr. so. Yes, exactly. So Cruz Jr. and I graduated the same class. You know, of course he was on the A team where I was on the B team. And when I was playing, quote unquote, playing

4:59 for the baseball team, it was fall ball. So I was playing on the B team. I was out field. And of course he was center field for the A team. David Hayes was on that team. David Hayes was on that

5:11 team, yep, exactly Yeah,

5:14 so this crew's our coach. But I mean, is he going to turn it around and actually be our coach? I think so, I really do. And I think some of the other guys had a little bit of a run last year

5:25 where you saw spurts of maybe we're going to be a good team again. I agree. I look, it's like any other sport that starts with culture and ends with players. And if he can draw in, if he can draw

5:37 on the players that a baseball team needs, and I think he can, not only by his name, but also by what he's trying to do to create a culture there, I think he's going to be successful. Yeah.

5:49 Because he, you know, the track record of alums at colleges, coaches, just horrible, right? You go look at it. But man, they have the passion for it. Yeah. That's the nice thing about it.

6:02 Yeah. No, that's the thing. So this was, this was crazy. I had my annual Christmas party and you were kind of enough to make the drive out to Richmond to show up And I don't think I'd ever heard

6:14 this story. but 911,

6:18 you were there. Right. So I'm a survivor of 911 in New York City. Holy cow, tell me that. Why were you even up there? Well, in '99, let's say '99, I guess. Yeah, my wife and I got married.

6:35 We were here, didn't have kids, and then come fall of 2000s, where we were married about a year, and my wife

6:45 got a job opportunity up in New York, so we moved up there in October of 2000, and I literally, just like the cliche said, put the boots on the ground, started knocking on doors, literally, and

6:58 knocked on 100 doors, finally found a job as a commodity trader with a company called SMW Trading Company. SMW was a company that was headquartered in Chicago, but had an office in the World Trade

7:13 Center Tower, number one, North Tower. And so starting January 2nd or 3rd of 2001, that was my daily routine. Go up to the 85th floor of the North Tower and get ready for a day of trading as a

7:29 commodity. At the time, I was not a trader. I was an assistant trader, but I was in the commodity world. Oh, it's crazy. And so what happened that day? Welcome Tuesday, September 11th, 2001.

7:42 It was a beautiful day I mean, just absolutely gorgeous weather. It was the day after Monday Night Football in which the New York Giants had played the Broncos. And for me, that particular day, I

7:56 had actually just five, six, seven hours, well, actually I probably about eight or nine hours prior, taken my wife to the airport so that she could take a red-eye flight from New York to London

8:08 and for business And then when I made my way down to the World Trade Center complex around 85. that morning, stopped off at a local ATM and made a

8:21 deposit right there underneath the World Trade Center Tower, made my way up to the office on the 85th floor and was doing all of my daily preparations. I was probably five or six minutes away from

8:34 actually leaving that office, going down to the ground level, crossing the West Side Highway and going over to the World Financial Center over there by the Marina, then done in Battery Park, where

8:46 the most of the commodities were traded, like gold, gasoline, unleaded gasoline, natural gas, crude oil, you know, that was the NIMEX right there in the World Financial Center. So at

9:01 846 am. that morning, I was sitting at my desk with my back to our window Because of wide open sort of office, there were about 12 of us. 12 colleagues in the office, some staff members and

9:16 administrative staff who probably wouldn't have ever left the office. And then there was also some traders and assistant traders like myself. And as I'm sitting there, finishing my stuff, as I

9:26 said, getting ready to go downstairs. Sitting in my chair, there's this horrific explosion that occurred all around me. And I was thrown from my chair onto my knees. And as I struggled to stand

9:42 up, I realized that this 110 story building, that took up an acre footprint, was lurching back and forth with sickening vengeance. I mean, I felt like in those five or 10 seconds of movement back

9:57 and forth that we were gonna go over, it was like being at the top of a roller coaster and feeling like, oh my God, my stomach's coming up in my throat, right? We're going over. As

10:09 this was happening, I remember seeing this ghostly column of air shot into the office and as quickly as it shot in, it shot back out and as it did so, it slammed the door in our office to the

10:18 outside world, basically. Slammed it shut, kicked up a couple of papers that filtered back down like I was in a movie, couple of ceiling tiles fell. And everybody then was just wondering what

10:33 happened, right? Some people speculated, well, a bomb went off where, well, my boss had seen what was happening. He saw the plane that ultimately hit us, come into the building. He had jumped

10:46 out of his office, and I vaguely remember feeling him jump out of his office. He jumped out of his office right before the explosion occurred. And because that was the only thing he could think to

10:56 do, see. So he's like looking out the window, seeing a plane. So he was looking, we faced North, right? So at our level, 85 stories tall, you could see planes taking off and landing.

11:11 at LaGuardia Airport, some eight miles northeast, right? Right. So he caught this plane. He was talking to his wife on the phone. He caught this plane coming over the spine of the island, which

11:22 was a little bit odd. And he caught it around the Empire State Building, just booking it towards us. And the only thing that he could do, or think to do, was throw the phone, the handset down,

11:35 and jump out of the way. Because in his mind, the plane was coming right at us or right below us. But luckily for us,

11:44 it slammed right above us. It came in between the 93rd and 99th floors. So I mean, eight floors above us, which is not a big variance, right? Oh my gosh, no, not at all. Yeah, so here we are.

11:59 No, after this lurching of this building and realizing, for me, the first of two times that day that I thought we might die, right? I thought we were going over but after 10 seconds or so. felt

12:10 felt like an eternity. That movement of that building stopped. We had electricity. Phones worked. Computer still worked. The only thing that was odd was the door was slammed shut. A couple of

12:22 ceiling tiles fell on the ground. Paper was flipped on the ground. And when you looked outside to the north, you could see from above debris following an occasionally a flame and occasionally smoke.

12:34 And so over the next five minutes, quite a bit of deliberation and figuring out what do we do? What's going on?

12:43 I remember some people saying we need to wait to hear, you know, like a public service announcer come on the on the PSA or the PA and say, hey, everything's okay or you need to evacuate.

12:56 I along with a colleague of mine walked over to the door. And just like we did, you know, when we were five years old, you know, what do you do when you When there's a fire, you go feel the door.

13:05 Right. Door handles he was hot. So I did, I touched that door handle and that door and it was not hot, so I opened it. And when I opened it, looking into the corridor, the main corridor, it

13:15 was pitch black. And I remember seeing this creature crawling on the ceiling towards me. And it was quickly evident what that was. It was a smoke ball. I could smell it, you know, it smelled of

13:32 jet fuel, concrete, jet fuel, concrete, rancid material coming towards us. And I quickly closed the door 'cause we had good air in our office. There was no smoke, there was no fire. Yeah. And

13:44 so then, you know, you weighed about a minute or so as we did and opened the door again and that creature of smoke had dissipated enough that you could kind of look outside and see. Then of course,

13:57 you know, right across the hallway, there's a guy sort of peering out of his own door and what's going on? What are you all doing? Where's the stairwell? Nobody knew where the stairwell was, you

14:07 know, why would you why would you or why would you or or as we learned, you know, you just you think totally differently in situations like that, right, your mind is, is focused on other things.

14:20 Some people are focused on survivability. Some people are just afraid. Some people just can't focus on the moment at hand. It's amazing.

14:30 So I walk back into our office And now we're sort, as a group, we're sort of kind of coming into this conclusion that we're all going to leave. Yeah. So I gather stuff,

14:41 which I didn't have much of. I had a water bottle and I put that in my coat pocket. And, you know, I had some other personal stuff that I put in there. And by this point, my colleague Rob and I

14:54 decided we were going to leave and then everybody else did But somebody yelled out and said, Hey, where's one of our colleagues? His name was Marvin. So, where's Marvin? And I don't know why I

15:05 took it upon myself to go find Marvin, but somebody said he went into the restroom right before the explosion occurred. But I said, okay, let me go check at the restroom. So I opened the door,

15:16 walk out into this hallway, which was pretty dark. There were some emergency lights, there were some lights. As we walk out, Chuck, there's some fires on the ground, nothing just like

15:26 smoldering, like campfire-like, right? And then you look down the main spine to the left would have taken you all the way to our elevators, to the right would have been more office doorways,

15:40 right? To the left, looking down towards the elevators, it was evident we were not taking the elevators down. Doors were completely blown out. Fires were sort of rampaging on walls and carpet and

15:55 whatnot.

15:57 And right across the way here was an entrance to the men's restroom.

16:03 I look in there and it was like in pristine condition, like nothing had happened. And I call that for Marvin and he wasn't in there. So Marvin's story is that yes, he did go to the restroom right

16:14 before the explosion occurred. And he was literally walking out of the restroom. He was about to head down to that elevator shaft, right? Bank of elevators. And when the explosion occurred, he

16:27 was jostled into the wall

16:32 And from the direction of the elevator bank comes this fireball shooting towards him. So he turns and he goes down the hallway and he tries doors and tries to open doors and he finally makes it to

16:44 the last door at the end of the hallway and he opens the door. And as he's going in and he's closing the door, that fireball had chased him, it cinged his eyebrows off. I know why. Luckily,

16:55 eventually Marvin does make it down 'cause he's there to tell me the story later, right? Right. There's a reason you knew that Exactly. By this point, after my review of the bathroom to see

17:08 everything was okay, I noticed as I came out, I noticed that everybody in our office had now started to filter out and we were going into emergency stairwell, which literally was right there in

17:20 front of us right across the way. So we started our descent from 85 floors and here we go So when you're in that stairwell, is it full of smoke, what's kind of going on in the stairwell? The

17:36 stairwell is as well lit as any emergency stairwell would be even after a catastrophe. It was not even even after a catastrophe, pardon me. It was as well lit as if nothing had happened, no smoke

17:50 at this point

17:53 But as we descended, there were a couple of things we were moving pretty quickly in that

18:02 In fact, we got down a couple of floors and not knowing what was ahead of us. My colleague Rob and I decided to do our best MacGyver and we broke into one of the fire extinguisher holders and both

18:15 of us took one fire extinguisher and we carried it down probably 40 or 50 floors, ended up never using them but we felt good having something in our possession. Just in case. Yeah, just in case.

18:28 Again, there's no smoke, there's no evident of fire and there's no knowledge that there's this, there's no knowledge of a possibility of this building falling. Right. Okay, so here we are,

18:41 we're descending, we get down probably, we go pretty fast to about the 78th floor plus or minus.

18:48 And remember, mindset-wise,

18:53 something happened that caused us to need to go, right? So we're descending in an emergency stairwell because we're getting down out of the building.

19:01 Well, on this floor, wherever it was, '78, '79 or so, people are starting to come back up. Really? And we say, what's going on? They said, well, the door down below us is pinned shut. And

19:14 a comment like that kind of goes in one ear out the other, like, okay, well, clearly I can't go that way 'cause you've already tried. So let's exit the stairwell onto the floor and find the next

19:26 stairwell of which there were three. There were three emergency stairwells in each of those two 110-story buildings. So we exit that onto that floor and there's some damage, you know, there's like

19:38 walls that are halfway down and some wires that are, like, sparking, you know,

19:45 and you just kind of make your way through as though, like, that was no big deal, like you're climbing on some, you know, jungle gym at a, you know, at a park.

19:56 I don't mean to make that sound silly, but that's kind of what it was like, right? Or scaling some mountain. And we get to the next stairwell chuck and it becomes like Houston traffic at 3 pm, 5

20:09 pm, right? It's like stop and go the rest of the way. And that would ultimately be our last stairwell that we got into, to take us down.

20:21 You know, we're, everybody's trying their phones, right? And remember, this is 2001, right? So everybody has a flip phone or maybe a blackberry or something, right? And, you know, you'd get

20:32 like, maybe you'd get a ring, a faint ring or two, and then it would go dead and it'd say something like, you know, service unavailable, try again later and shit. And

20:43 so we tried that and then people were passing jokes just to, you know, pass the time away. Again, mindset, we knew we needed to get out of the building some reason, but there was no evidence of

20:55 anything that So how long are you from kind of starting the descent 'til right about now, going to the other, is that? Well, I'll tell you, so

21:09 when the plane, when the building was hit was 846 am, I would say it took us five minutes as a company to decide we're leaving, right? For me to go check the bathroom from Marvin and all this,

21:20 and let's start the descent. So that takes us to 851, right? So, and ultimately, I get down to

21:32 out of our building to the underground mall when the second tower falls, and we'll get to that in a minute, but that second tower fell at 959. So it took me in almost 70 minutes to go down 85

21:47 flights. Oh, wow. Yes.

21:50 So in our descent, there's several things, Several. three real interesting. things that happened that I remember and I recount. The first one is, I remember around the 60th floor, we hit this

22:07 area that ultimately made me understand what those people in that first stairwell were telling me, hey, the door down below was pin shut. Each building, each of the two world trade center towers,

22:20 world trade center tower one, world trade center tower two, the north tower, south tower, okay Each of those buildings had 99 elevators. Think of that, 99 in each, right? And so you've got to

22:34 have mechanical rooms, right? Hoisting rooms that they can hoist up and down. And so as you're descending and the way they were built out, sometimes your stairwell hit one of those mechanical

22:48 rooms. And so you sort of had to walk along, let's say a platform crossed over and then you started your descent further, right? Okay. So around the 60th floor, we're on this new platform and

22:60 there's just this woman behind me. And I noticed her sort of rocking back and forth and she had like a white shirt in her hand. And I don't know, the good Texan in me decided to strike up a

23:12 conversation with this woman, right? And I was like, I said, you know, Ma'am, are you okay? And she said, I gotta get out of here. I've got two kids at home and I've got to get back to them

23:22 And I kind of gave her a little half hug, like the good Texan would be, right? I even had my water bottle. I was like, Here, have some water. And instead of taking a sip of the water, she took

23:35 the water and poured it on this white shirt of hers and put it up to her mouth. Now, I'll set the stage now. You asked me earlier, was there any smoke or anything? At this point around the 60th

23:47 floor, the only thing, we had light, just the same amount of light as when we started. The only thing that was different, there was a thin layer of white smoke at the top of the ceiling. Okay.

23:57 But it was white smoke. What do you think about white smoke? White smoke means a fire if there was one is put out, right? Yeah. So a little false sense of security of sorts. Okay. What was

24:07 interesting about this woman was watching her after we had our little interlude. You know, she sort of, I just, I was amazed to watch her pick her way, you know, cutting line and advance much

24:22 faster than me. And of course, and nobody, you know, all these New Yorkers are there. She's cutting in front of these New Yorkers and nobody got mad at her. It was amazing. Yeah, and it is

24:31 interesting. It was so interesting. I can only presume as fast as she was going that she made it out alive. So we'll go with that for now. The next story that I was gonna mention to you is that

24:44 let's say around the 49th floor or so,

24:50 You know, we're descending, we're trying our cell phones. We're having these conversations. By this point, people had come into the stairwell and told us, by the way, the other building had

25:01 been hit. Oh, okay. But for me, man, that went in one ear and out the other. Like, okay, well, that's terrible. I hope everything's okay, but I'm trying my cell phone. We're having

25:11 conversation. It was very weird, right? I was hyper-focused on the moment and the step at hand. Yeah And still just no concept that the building could follow on you. You know, it's like, I got

25:24 lucky. There were no creaks. There were no creaks that you could hear. There's no popping noises. There's no nothing like that, right? So around the 49th floor, as we're sort of stopped on the

25:37 next step down from above us, you could hear somebody say, everybody moved to your right. Everybody moved to your right, okay, well, so naturally, it's like somebody's saying, you know, heads

25:47 up, right? So I look up. And from above as we're coming, I see why they're talking.

25:54 First thing you see is a gentleman in a white shirt, dark pants, the shirt is half covered in blood. He's got a bandage that covers half of his head that's covered in blood. And this man is, as

26:09 he's walking slowly down the stairs, he's kind of like, he's kind of like the lead of about six or seven other people holding on to him And this caravan of people of injured folk, bloodied folk,

26:23 sort of everybody moved to their right and allowed them a space to pass by. And as they passed by, what amazed me is, everybody just kind of filtered back in like no big deal. Nobody took

26:36 advantage of the space that they left, right? It was an amazing sense of humanity in that crisis situation. Again, mentally we didn't think anything was gonna happen, right? Didn't know this

26:47 thing could fall. Um, and then the third thing I would say that was an interesting story. Um, there's more to it, but the, the third thing happened around the 35th floor. So, and that was the

27:04 first site of a first responder, right? First firefighter is coming up. And here's a guy who's wearing 80 pounds of gear, trying to go as far up and has high up as he can to save, you know, to

27:19 get to the fire zone, to help save people. Right. And all he's doing is ushering words of encouragement. You guys, you've got it. Just keep going. You're almost there. Oh, wow. You've got

27:30 this. And I'm telling you, like, if there was any anxiety bubble that had developed by in anybody's minds, at least for my sake, it popped that bubble. I knew that anything from here down was

27:42 clear. Cause if he made it up, then I can make it down Right, you know Oh, that's wild, I wouldn't have thought of that. But I mean, you hear story and story from survivors from

27:59 the first responders' brother or their wives, oh yeah, my husband was great or this or that. It's wild that you get to see that. Yes, correct. I mean, he was all business,

28:15 but part of that business was the human touch, right? You know, as we say with doctors, you know, that doctor had really good bedside manners. That's what he had, right? He did exactly what he

28:26 did to do is keep our spirits elevated. And I mean, did they have hoses with him? No, he didn't have hoses with him. No, no. So I mean, he's arguably going up to get people down. He's like,

28:39 I would only presume, I don't know how the firefighters work per se, but I would presume he's the first recon. Yeah, got it. Yeah. So as we continue, every five floors or so, from then on down,

28:58 doors to that particular floor were open. So as we were descending, you could kind of look in there and occasionally you'd see a firefighter or two, maybe triaging a patient. Could have been

29:11 triaging that group of, that caravan that had just passed us by We got down to around the 19th floor and by this point, by the way, by this point, my colleague and I, we had dished the fire

29:23 extinguisher, right? We didn't need it for firefighter passes. We don't need it anymore. At least that was our thought. And another funny thing is I had, you know, this was 2001, right? And I

29:33 guess, Investors Business Daily is still around, but I had in my Investors Business Daily newspaper with me. That was one of the things. I had my water and some pins and whatever else in my

29:42 Investors Business Daily newspaper. And the reason I bring it up because. as we're descending, I don't know where it was, but I was like trying to get rid of weight 'cause I was sweating profusely,

29:54 man. So I'd take my investors business daily and I'd throw it in the stairwell. And a couple floors down, I'm thinking to myself, and I just trashed the building.

30:05 I mean, looking back, I was pretty silly thought. Yeah, but no, I - But that was a thought that went through my mind at the time. That's how I guess how calm I was about the situation Knowing

30:16 now what had happened, right? Knowing now that the building was gonna fall. So as we're descending, or it was the 19th floor, and we come across this woman who is just standing there. Look, at

30:30 the time I was 27 years old, this woman was in her mid-50s, so she was older. Yeah. She was an older woman, but she was standing there, and she had her shoes off in one hand, And she had her,

30:42 she had a purse with so much stuff in it. It seemed like she had everything and the kitchen sink in that purse. And my colleague and I decided to ask her if she needed help, and we said, Ma'am,

30:56 are you okay? And she said, I can't go on anymore. I'm so tired. And so my colleague Rob and I, and this woman who we ultimately find out, her name is Juliet. So Rob Juliet and myself become

31:10 our own caravan, and we start to make our way slowly down And people are passing us and it's fine because we're letting them go. It's starting to move a little faster now, you're closer to the

31:20 bottom, right? And so we finally get down, the three of us, we get down to the end of our emergency stairwell, and we exit out into the footprint, right? We exit out into the, let's call it

31:40 the

31:42 street level. within the building, see, so I was still within the footprint of my building, right?

31:51 And firefighters, first responders, there's

31:55 now a pretty steady line directing us, and instead of directing us out of the footprint, out into the open air, they are now directing us down escalators, which obviously at this point were no

32:09 longer working. Even though we had electricity earlier, these escalators were turned off. And as you're looking out, you're looking out into the corridor, the courtyard, let's call it, between

32:21 my building, one world trade, and the other building, two worlds, and all of the buildings, right? A big courtyard, as you may remember. And there's debris everywhere, there's trees, you can

32:32 see blue skies, and then there's some gray, and you're like, well, that's clouds, or maybe it's smoke, or something. There's some fires in the trees, and debris and then there's some, you

32:42 know. There's maybe even some body parts, right? And you're like, What? My mind can't process what I'm seeing. Am I seeing that? Is that real? What's going on? No, keep coming, right? Yeah.

32:53 And you're just ushered down. You can't, like, now it's like how am I, what's going on? I can't really process what's going on. So we go down the escalator, right? We go down the escalator

33:03 because where first responders were ultimately taking us was out of our footprint, underground into that underground mall, if you recall. It used to be like the Galleria down there, right? Right,

33:16 yeah. Gap store, Banana Republic, you know, delis, sunglasses, all of it, right? It was a full-on metropolis underground. So we follow this footprint and this path into the underground mall.

33:30 We're now passing the corridor that would have led us to two world trades in our tower, okay? And we're getting into that main corridor of the underground wall. And Juliet, the woman we were

33:44 helping, decides to stop. She's like, I got to stop for a second. I was like, Okay. So I give her my, seems like now at this point, my ever ending or never ending water bottle. Right. As I

33:54 take some water, she takes a sip. And so we're standing there and mind you, we're roughly, let's call it 100 yards-ish from where we had just exited our building. We're probably a 100 yards from

34:09 two world trades in her tower, right? Right all underground, right? So I've got a big ceiling above me, right?

34:16 And you know, at this point, you're looking on the ground, there's some water puddles and some of the sprinklers above you. It looked like they had been bubbling, but aren't bubbling anymore and

34:27 just trying to process that. Here's some water and then all of a sudden from around this corner that we just stopped at, you hear a rumbling. It's not really a rumbling or is it a rumbling? Maybe

34:40 it is a rumbling. I don't But then it's a pitter patter of shoes on the ground. People are running and then there's screams. Now you're trying to process this. This is all happening in real time,

34:52 right? In split second time. And as I'm standing there, hearing this rumbling and pitter patter of shoes of people running and screaming, a whole bank of lights under that underground goes out.

35:04 And then another. And then from around the corner, somebody else run And then another bank goes out. And then somebody says, everybody down. And now it's like, okay, this rumbling is all around

35:20 us. It is loud and it is crumbling. And I push Juliet and she pushes my colleague Rob. And we all three sort of dive to the ground. I dive and I follow up into a, I ball up into a fetal position

35:33 against this half wall. And for the next 10, 15, 30 seconds, whatever the case was, I feel like for the second time that day that I was gonna die. I felt like it was so loud and I started

35:47 getting pelted with shards of glass and debris and whatnot. I felt like the ceiling was caving in on me. Right. And as this, this maelstrom of activity, you know, finally subsides after however

35:60 long, I don't even know, it seemed like an eternity, as you can imagine. I try to open my eyes and as I open my eyes, I can't see anything And I took my hand and I put it up to my eyes and

36:12 perhaps I didn't even open my eyes, you know, 'cause I can't see my fingers in front of me. So I close my eyes again as tight as can be and then I open them again and I still can't see anything.

36:21 And I take my first breath of air underneath there and it was like half of it was just, it just cut on the way down. It was a suffocating breath. I was breathing in dust and debris in the air. You

36:33 see, it took me till probably later that night the next day to kind of piece together timing-wise what had happened. I was effectively in that underground mall when two World Trade Center, the

36:46 first tower to fall, fell all around us. Wow. So my thought of, hey, you might die here was legit. Yeah. And so as we're all three laying on the ground, we're starting to now, can you breathe?

37:03 I'd say the next couple of breaths became easier and easier Now my eyesight, I could see some light in the distance so I could make out silhouettes of things, but it was still hard, it was still

37:15 hard to breathe. I called out for Juliette. She quickly says, I'm here. I call out for Rob and it takes me three or four times to get him to respond, but he ultimately responds. He's alive. And

37:28 within a minute or two

37:32 from behind us, There's, there's one firefighter that I recall and I say a firefighter. because he had this really heavy duty flashlight. One that's like super focused, such that if you were,

37:46 within a few feet, you could see where you're going, but outside of that focal area, man, you don't even know what you're stepping on, right? And so here he comes with like six, seven, eight

37:57 people, and that's it from right behind

38:01 us. He's walking by us, and of course, I'm like, Juliet, let's go and Rob gets up, and so we follow this firefighter We ultimately follow the path that we were gonna take, and we get up to the

38:13 street level, and as we make our way onto the street level, it's like a war zone. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what has happened here, right? I feel like

38:26 I'm on the set of some movie, because there's six to eight inches of dust and debris on the ground, it's snowing debris, right? In fact, I recall, even right now, I can remember it.

38:40 You know, it's, it was so, it was snowing debris, kind of like when it snows, even though we don't get it here in Houston, but when it snows, it sort of muffles sound, right? I had that

38:48 muffled sound in the air. It was weird, man. And I never once thought to myself, let me look back, you know, see our buildings and see if they're okay. Why would I? Of course the buildings are

39:00 standing. Had no idea our building fell. Or I had no idea a building had fallen. Oh my God So we cross the street. And in fact, as we're crossing the street, running towards us on church street,

39:15 if you recall, you know, some of those streets down there on church street, this gentleman's running towards us. And he says, and he's yelling out. And he's like, you know, look for bodies

39:23 under cars. Look for bodies under cars. And he runs right by us and he runs away and keeps yelling the same thing. Of course, I'm thinking, what are you talking about? Look for bodies under cars.

39:33 So we just continue on our way, right? You know, 'cause I still had this like, this mentality that I just need to keep going one step at a time, just get away. I know I need to get away from

39:44 something, I don't know why. And as we're crossing the street, we get to St. Paul's churchyard, or parallel to St. Paul's churchyard. And Juliette

39:57 wants to stop again.

40:01 And I give her some water. It was pretty much the end of my water ball at that point. I give her some water and she says, she says, Where's my purse? I gotta go find my purse. And she starts to

40:12 take a few steps back towards the world, traits in her complex. And

40:16 I said, Juliette. I said, Juliette, no, no, no, Rob's got it. Rob took it early when we first met her, right? And you didn't. And I don't mean to laugh, but it was funny. No, but yeah,

40:27 no. I mean, in hindsight, given that you're here. Yeah. And so I said, Rob's got it, he's up ahead of us. And we ultimately catch up to Rob, who was ahead of us and he said, Dude, I dropped

40:38 that. thing. It was like 80 pounds. It had so much stuff inside of it.

40:44 We found a local, like an old sound waves, whatever they had up there. A gentleman, I guess the owner was ushering us in as he was other people. Come on in, come on in, seek refuge in this and

40:58 that. And the air was, you know, look, the air was a little bit better at this point where we were. There was less debris on the ground

41:06 and Juliet said, I've got to stop. And so Rob and I set her down on one of the stairs in this gentleman's shop. And we exchanged numbers, gave her a kiss on the forehead. Since she didn't have

41:16 her purse, she had no money. So we each gave her like 20 bucks and we went along our way. We exited that building, was walking on the streets because we wanted to catch up to maybe just like,

41:26 just keep getting away, right? We didn't even know what we were doing like zombies, right? Right. And we caught up with some colleagues and

41:34 then around, I'd say 10 minutes after that happened. as the streets are lined with people, looking back towards where we were just coming from, there's this gasp by everybody. Turn around, we

41:48 look up, and that was the first time. I see my building start to pancake all the way down, thinking to myself, man, like an hour and a half ago, I was up there on the 85th floor. Yeah. And

42:00 then I said, guys, where's two World Trade Center, the other tower? And they looked at me and said, the other building fell, man, 'cause of some of these guys we had caught up with, they had

42:11 seen it, they were chased. They were chased by the big smoke ball that chased them.

42:18 So yeah,

42:21 we continued our way, we found a pay phone, and each of us were able to call loved ones, let 'em know that we were alive. I probably walked about 15 miles that day up to the Upper West Side. I

42:32 eventually went up to Columbia Hospital to check things out, 'cause like I said,

42:38 that first breath cut on the way down. And so when I went up there and Columbia hospitals like at 168th and Broadway or Columbus, way on the Upper West, way on the Upper West side, right? That's

42:52 how far I've walked. And

42:57 man, you know, getting up there, 'cause you're now 15, you know, 10 to 15 miles north of the World Trade Center tower,

43:07 they were prepared for an onslaught of injured and whatnot. But man, when I got there, there wasn't anybody else coming up there and I was treated like royalty. Like, you know, three doctors

43:18 attended to me, five nurses and PAs. And

43:23 I ultimately got a good bill of health and was sent home, but, you know, at least I went. And, you know, I'm, look, I'm happy that I was able to survive that thing and make it out. Nobody

43:38 from our company who was up there or even outside of there passed away. Nobody died that we knew. And I mentioned earlier that I made a deposit there around 815 that morning, about a week later, I

43:55 get a letter in the mail saying, your deposit went through. I mean, like, how did that happen? Is that possible? But they honored it. So yeah, that's my story Oh my God, the,

44:08 you know, if you're Juliet, thank God you've met Billy Forney that morning, you know? Yeah, absolutely. You know, it sounds like 10 minute more delay and might not have been around. We say we.

44:24 So Rob and his wife, myself and my wife, and Juliet and her husband went to dinner on the one year anniversary And her husband, whose name is Brian. Um, you know, as we went, as we got into

44:42 conversation, he stopped everybody and he said, Hey, guys, I need to tell you all something. You know, Robin Billy, I will tell you this right now. If y'all weren't there to help Juliet, I

44:52 know she would not be here today. And, and, and he kept going. He said, he said, the reason I know that in my heart is because I'm a survivor of the Holocaust. He was several years older than

45:06 Juliet, but yeah, here's a survivor of the Holocaust telling us this. Oh my God. Unbelievable. The impact that this had on, on so many lives is just incredible, even to this day. I mean, you

45:20 know, look, I have colleagues who don't like talking about it. They don't like sharing this story. Right. My boss, he doesn't like sharing the story at all. You know, he'll make a comment on,

45:30 on let's say Facebook or some social media page like, you know, hey, here's a picture of me in 2001 or here's here's here's a here's an artifact from that day, and that's all I can talk about now,

45:42 you know? Yeah. For me, it's been very therapeutic. It's very therapeutic for me to talk about it and get it off my chest. In fact, when I first started talking about it,

45:55 it was about seven years in, at this point, my wife and I had our first child, and she was, I guess, she was at this point, she was, well, when she was seven or eight years old, she was gonna

46:05 do a book report, and she chose to do a book report on 911, and I had been giving talks about

46:13 my experience, kind of like this, to groups big and small, public, private, for many years, and then about seven or eight years in, I started to have this feeling of, I wouldn't call it PTSD,

46:28 really more like survivors guilt, and this feeling that I was somehow trampling on the graves of the people who had passed away. And so I started turning down opportunities to talk about my

46:42 experience and it hurt me and I couldn't stand it, but

46:48 I was fighting that demon. Yeah. Well, here comes my daughter, seven or eight years old and she wants to do a book report or she's asked to do a book report and I said, Of course, sweetie, I'll

46:59 help you do a book report. And Chuck, I was blown away by, even at that time, the amount of misinformation, the amount of conspiracy theories that were out there. There was even a website

47:11 dedicated to debunking my story that I was given because I had written down my story. This is an interesting part of this story, by the way.

47:22 September 11th happened on a Tuesday, right? So a day or two later, I get a call from a high school friend out in California. He gets ahold of me somehow. And he's like, Billy, so glad to hear

47:34 that you made it out, you know.

47:38 I wanna send you a story that a friend of my dad's sent out. He wasn't in the building, he was nearby, you know? But here's his story. And if you ever share your story, I'd love for you to send

47:51 it to me. And I was like, okay, then, sure. Not 30 minutes later, I get a call from another colleague, totally unrelated. And he said, Billy, you have to write down your story. You have to

48:01 write it down. You have to preserve it. Everything you can remember, write down every single detail For you, for history, for your kids. So I did and check. Ultimately, I sent that out to like

48:13 eight people, including my two friends, mostly friends, I mean, mostly family. And the next thing you know, this was like my, you know, 15 minutes of fame of a viral, you know, viral video

48:25 of sorts. I'm getting emails back from people across the world. Like one that sticks out in my mind was a person who said,

48:37 I mean, as short as can be, she said, Billy, you and I will never meet, but I want to tell you I received your story of your experience in 911 and I'm so happy that you made it out and thank you,

48:49 God bless for sharing that story with us. And that was it. Those words were so powerful to me. That was really one of the reasons why I decided this is therapeutic for me and people like to hear

49:02 the story. So why not tell it? So fast forward, sorry, I'm jumping back in time here, fast forward to this time period where I was turning down talk opportunities and my daughter wants to do a

49:16 book report. And there's this conspiracy page debunking my own story and that was right there I realized I need to keep telling my story. I need to keep telling it.

49:28 If my daughter is going to do book reports or the next family's daughters in the future are going to be doing book reports. and they're gonna be finding misinformation and conspiracy theories. What

49:38 are they gonna know to believe? Right. No, it's interesting, my priest Patrick

49:46 does a thing. We wound up having a couple, during COVID, we wound up having a couple of men's retreats at my house. So think 10 guys locked in my house for 72 hours. And he does this thing where

49:59 you go through your family tree and he says, Okay, I want you to go backas far as you can remember. And so I want you to start talking about each, remember your family. So you talk about mom and

50:12 dad a whole bunch, talk about your grandparents. You get to your great-grandparents, you know one or two words. You probably didn't even meet them. You know, Oh, my great-grandmother's really

50:24 short. And supposedly she was a shrew. You know, my great-grandfather was this great doctor. But all you have are kind of these short-grandparents. And so then you go through, you know, much

50:35 kind of, well, let's call it therapy work, where you're talking and stuff. And then he kind of sets you free with, okay, what are the two or three words you want your great-grandchildren to be

50:47 saying about you? And anyway, it's a neat twist on how he does it, but that's been one of the biggest things about kind of the podcast and like having David Hayes on, 'cause he's going through to

51:01 a stickular cancer I was like, David, you want your great, great grandchildrento know what you went through. You don't want two or three words. Right. You know, he was a great doctor, and he

51:13 was a drunkard, and maybe he got into the first car wreck in Fort Bing County. You know, that's what I know about my great, great father. You're a great father. 'Cause it can live forever. Yeah.

51:23 In your own words. And to his credit, David was like, Sure, I'll come on, I'll share. And to your credit, coming on and sharing, this has been amazing. powerful. Yeah. It's a powerful story

51:36 for sure. I guess that you probably at your party or recently, you know, I went up to New York without a big story and came back with a huge one. Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, just the things

51:49 that really resonated with me is, I mean, people letting, you know, people cut, you know, the humanity of coming through, you got you and Rob, come on, Juliet. So that's, it's always good

52:07 to see, you know, in this, in this age of cynicism, and, you know, everything sucking and people yelling at each other. It's, it is amazing to see that side of it. For sure. In fact, one

52:20 thing many, and actually probably all New Yorkers who were there at the time remember very vividly is for six months after 911. you would never hear anybody honk their horns on those streets of New

52:36 York. Never, it did not happen. I'm telling you

52:42 and people will recall, yeah, that was a great time. Nobody was honking at each other. Everybody was letting people in. And at the same time, at the same time, people were looking out for one

52:52 another. Normally, walking on the streets of New York,

52:58 us Texans would be willing to say hello to somebody and a New Yorker, if they heard a Texan say hello, would think, well, you clearly want something from me. So I'm gonna hold my purse tighter

53:08 and walk over here. But there was a period of time where people were much more friendly. It was an interesting time. Yep. If ever a

53:21 pitcher had to throw a strike, it was George Bush walking out on that mound at the Yankee gang And was in

53:31 that strike. Yeah. Yeah. No, you know, my moment of 911 is we were in, Kim and I had moved back to Houston from Dallas because we'd been in Dallas for one year. I was, I had just joined Kane

53:46 Anderson. We were in an apartment because we were building the house over on Villanova and we were in an apartment and my mother-in-law called and she was annoying And so I was like, What do you

53:60 want? She goes, Turn on the TV. I go, I really don't have time. I got to get to work. And she goes, No, no. You need to turn on the TV. And I turned on the TV and the buildings were on fire.

54:12 And one of my best friends from business school worked for American Express. And so I immediately just called her to make sure she was okay And she had turned out, I got her on her cell phone and

54:26 she was in Dallas or something she was traveling.

54:31 And I just remember being relieved, but I remember hearing her voice of, oh my God, I have so many friends in that building. And what I wound up doing, and I don't even know why, I went and got

54:43 my car washed. And I don't know why I did that, but I just felt like I had to do something normal. And I don't know what came over me, but I went to that Bubbles car wash right there on Kirby,

54:57 got my car washed and just kind of sat there and stared at it on the TV. Yeah, yeah. It's people, I mean, look, and

55:07 think about, you know, think about some of the events that have happened, you know, obviously that event didn't happen to you, right? Much like the Oklahoma City bombing did not happen to us.

55:21 Right. It was many miles removed, but there's a, There's

55:28 something about. having gone through an event like that. From my perspective, it has changed my perspective on what people are going through, just the recent events in New Orleans and events in

55:42 Las Vegas, right? There are real things happening to people and it's changing lives and it's changing opinions and all this stuff, but it's affecting people emotionally and spiritually and mentally.

55:58 And your reaction is not atypical. I have so many people at my talks come up and tell me a very similar story. The interesting thing about it though is you were willing and interested in telling

56:11 your story. No matter how great or minimal you

56:18 think that experience was, telling that story is a big deal. And so from my standpoint, that's why I was reinvigorated when my daughter wanted to do her book report. Since that time, my

56:31 reinvigoration has been huge. I want to continue to tell this story. Just like you want to tell this story, I went to the Bubbles car wash. Well, hey, listen, that was where you were. It's

56:40 like, where were you when JFK was murdered? You know, not everybody was there that day. They were in Houston, LA, San Antonio. And here's where I was. I was going to the grocery store and

56:53 people want to tell those stories. And that is something that has been amazing to me is hearing everybody's stories. It's awesome. It's like, you know, recently I was involved in the development

57:06 of Palisocial, which was the redevelopment of the old palace bowling lanes over there on Beller Boulevard inside the loop. And the interesting thing when we were raising money for that is how many

57:16 people that I talked to and heard their stories. Some of them were just simple, I used to go there every day and I bowled a hundred And I was happy, and two, I proposed to my wife, you know. in

57:30 the parking lot, right? The stories were amazing.

57:36 Yeah, no, that's wild. Yeah, I didn't realize you worked on the palace lanes. It used to have the bar there. And that was kind of our bar when we lived over on the house on Villanova, we would

57:48 just walk down to the palace lanes. 'Cause I mean, Avogka said it was like a dollar. I'm sure it was cheating. Yeah. And so anyway, they had a bar and

57:58 of course that grill had been used for 50 years. Hadn't changed it. And the grease at all. Yeah.

58:05 Exactly. That's awesome. Yeah. Billy, you were cool to come on. I mean, listen, thank you for having me. No, absolutely. I had chills four or five times during that story, and so, you know,

58:17 I'm glad you made it out. Thank you.

58:20 on the podcast. Sure.