Decides, I’ve got to call my wife because she knows and she’s going to see it, another accident at the World Trade Center. He’s freaking out. So he goes to a pay phone, he finds it several blocks away. He told me, Glenn, you have no idea what it’s like to find a pay phone in this city now. He finds the pay phone across the street from the New York Stock Exchange building. He calls up his wife. She doesn’t answer.
He leaves a message: Honey, I’m outside. I’m across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, problem at the World Trade Center, I’m going back to work, they are good evacuating the building, I’m going to go back and try to get everybody out.
He starts walking back and he knows where the evacuation route is. He knows which door his staff will be coming out of eventually. He knows they are up on 106 and 107, it’s going to take them forever to get downstairs.
So he’s making his way in that direction when he hears the second plane whiz by. That’s when he realized there was real trouble.
Michael never made it back to the exit door of the World Trade Center. The building collapsed. Everybody he knew, his business, all of his friends, his clients. He had a packed restaurant of risk assessment, he had a convention of risk assessment managers sitting in his restaurant when the buildings came down.
A lot of people might move from New York City. A lot of people might build their restaurant on the ground floor from thereon out. A lot of people might give up. Mike at didn’t. He started over again.
And he built his restaurant in the only other new twin towers in New York City. In fact, the towers that they were afraid Rudy Giuliani said might not be finished being built because of 9/11. On 9/11 the twin towers on Central Park weren’t finished yet. When they were, Michael decided to put his restaurant there, Porterhouse. And he started over. In the new twin towers in New York. Another landmark for Michael La Monaco.
