Starting Over

When the planes slammed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, few companies were as hard-hit as a small, close-knit firm called Sandler O'Neill. Of the 83 people in the office that morning, only 17 got out alive. Employees lost mentors, assistants lost bosses, friends lost friends. This is the story of what happened next.

By Katrina Brooker

On a bright mid-October afternoon, Jimmy Dunne III gets out of an elevator on the 19th floor of a New York City skyscraper, marches through a set of generic glass doors, and heads into a small office overflowing with people. His demeanor--the sense of purpose in his stride, the unblinking focus in his eyes--conveys the kind of fierce intensity you might associate with a concert pianist playing Rachmaninoff's Third. Except it's more serious than that; you can sense immediately there's more at stake. And, indeed, there is. Dunne's small Wall Street firm, Sandler O'Neill & Partners, used to have its headquarters on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center, and it was among the hardest-hit by the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. Out of 171 total employees, 66 died that awful morning, including two of the three people who ran the firm: name partner Herman Sandler and investment-banking head Chris Quackenbush. The 45-year-old Dunne, who had been the third member of the ruling troika, was close to both men--Sandler had been his mentor and Quackenbush his best friend. Now, as the sole surviving senior partner, he has made it his mission to make Sandler O'Neill whole again; his every waking hour is devoted to the enormous struggle of rebuilding his decimated firm.

The midtown office Dunne has just entered is Sandler O'Neill's post-Sept. 11 quarters, temporary space donated to the firm by Banc of America. It's not much more than a quarter of a floor, and of course it has nowhere near the breathtaking views of Sandler's old WTC headquarters. But Dunne is grateful to have it. As he walks into the reception area, he nods at a man sitting there--a Sandler banker who is using the area as his office. Behind the man, taped to a large glass conference room wall, are memorials to the deceased--photographs of dead Sandler employees, letters and drawings from well-wishers ("Dear Mr. Dunne III, I'm sorry for what happened to your company," reads one from a Bronx sixth-grader), and, most prominent of all, a large matrix in which are written the names of both the living and the dead--as well as a series of dates. The dates, one quickly realizes, mark the days when funerals will take place; the purpose of this makeshift calendar is to ensure that at least one of Sandler's remaining 22 partners will attend each of Sandler's 66 funerals.

Dunne makes a quick turn and strides down a hallway. On his left are a series of secretarial cubicles; Sandler is using this space as its "bond desk." In this crowded area, bond salesmen are jostling for space, shouting out prices. In recent years buying and selling bonds has generated as much as 40% of Sandler's revenues; it's critical for the firm to have a functioning bond desk, even in its battered state. A salesman named Joel Comer has actually become a bond trader--as he must, since all of the firm's bond traders were killed in the attack. On the wall above the bond desk is an American flag, and under that, in handwritten block letters, is a sign that reads: "Our Little Big Firm."

On Dunne's right is a series of offices. Some are still being used by Banc of America employees, one to an office. The others--the ones being used by Sandler O'Neill--have two or three people sandwiched around one desk. In a conference room down the hall, 12 people are sharing one table; they've dubbed themselves the Knights of the Round Table. In a cramped cubicle a partner and his secretary have removed the arms from their chairs to give them enough room to share a desk.

"How was it, Jimmy?"
As Dunne walks into his office, a colleague stops him and asks him that question. Earlier in the day Dunne had made his first visit to ground zero. He'd gone with the widow of one of his deceased partners. Dunne looks deep into his questioner's eyes as he collects his thoughts. "Let's just say if I was determined before," he replies, "I'm on fire now."

There have been many times since Sept. 11 that Dunne has seemed on the verge of losing it, and this is one of those times. His voice quivers, and his eyes begin to tear. But then--just as he has done again and again since the terrorist attack--he gathers himself. "I'm glad I went," he says simply. Then he walks into his office and sets about doing his new job--leading this ravaged company to some sort of future.

The Size of Your Heart
"Monday was a horrific day for me," Jimmy Dunne is saying. It's Thursday, Oct. 25: five weeks after the WTC attack. Dunne is in his office, trying to manage, as usual, five things at once. His desk is impeccably organized, neat stacks of paper, all in their proper place. He's wearing a custom-made suit and shirt, with a Hermes tie. Every crease is in place.

What he did on Monday was play golf. Golf is Dunne's passion; he's a one-handicap golfer who belongs to more than 20 golf clubs, including such fabled sites as Shinnecock, Seminole, and the National, where he once won the club championship. Last year, he estimates, he played 170 rounds of golf--with business celebrities like Jack Welch, with clients and potential clients, and with buddies from Sandler O'Neill. Sandler was always that kind of firm--a place where people didn't just work together but lived their lives together. That's one reason the living are having such a hard time letting go of the dead.

On that Monday, Oct. 22, Dunne played Augusta with a client. But instead of having fun, he found it unbearably painful. Partly this was because it was the first time since Sept. 11 that he'd spent a day out of the office. But more than that, he found that the act of playing golf evoked too many memories.

"It made me think of Quack," Dunne says. His voice begins to shake, and he looks over at me with an intensity that I've never seen in my life. Here is his grief: raw, open, blunt. He makes no effort to hide it; on the contrary, it's impossible to sit in a room with Jimmy Dunne and not feel overwhelmed. I have to look away.

Golf originally brought Jimmy Dunne and Chris Quackenbush together--when they met on a driving range as teenagers growing up on Long Island. At 16, Quackenbush accompanied Dunne to visit his mother, who was in a hospital, dying of cancer. When they were 21, Quackenbush consoled Dunne after he'd been rejected from every law school he'd applied to. At 27, Quackenbush helped Dunne quit drinking. And at 32, Quackenbush quit his job at Merrill Lynch to take a flier on his best friend's new firm. "I'll never get to play with him again," Dunne says now. At Augusta, Dunne had marked his ball with a "Q," in memory of his dead friend. He says he'll do it that way forever.

PAGES 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7