60 minutes rewind there was nothing random about the acts of terrorism against the world trade
center the twin towers were not just symbols of american finance the people who worked there were
at the very heart of it like the small investment banking firm of sandler o'neill its headquarters
were on the 104th floor of tower 2 but its roots were in the very heart of america its business
was providing financial expertise and services to small and medium-sized banks and savings and
loans all across the country they had friends in places like wayne new jersey sioux city iowa
and santa barbara california of sandler o'neill's 171 employees 83 reported for
work at the world trade center on the morning of september 11th only 17 made it out alive for
the people of sandler o'neill continuing their business is every bit as important and symbolic
as the act that almost ended it we were allowed to join them a few days after the disaster in their
small midtown office where sandler o'neill had first come to regroup hiring crisis counselors
and therapists searching hospitals and trying to console and help the families of friends and
colleagues who were dead or missing hey billy bill hickey how you doing buddy hey i just wanted to
say hello and see if if i could do anything for you buddy the bankers and brokers and analysts
that all worked the phones before but never in a situation like this it's going to be hard
you got to let me know if there's anything at all but they couldn't give people the two things
they wanted to hear good news or hard information i've already touched base today with wright clark
edwards collins wiznowski and brett okay okay the names and the families went on and on
partners assistants researchers clerks rainmakers and number crunchers i've made contact today
with doug ergang's mom david rice's uh the guy who identified david rice's body for
richard vaughnfeld yeah i've spoken to chris newton carter's wife at length right and uh
i was with patty rosen this morning okay yeah how's she doing she helped me when i helped out
sanver o'neil's strongest asset had always been its people and the experience that comes with
highly trained employees who understood the company's business and had personal
relationships with its customers but as each day passed it had become apparent that much of that
intellectual and human capital had been depleted if they're having trouble identifying them we'll
start having the parents go down for the dna okay and then i'll print out and list the order of how
the siblings and how they want to go first for dna samples but right now if we can get
people to send stuff over like with scars shoe size blood type inscriptions a wedding band
as the grim reality set in the job of resurrecting sandler o'neil had fallen on
the shoulders of its 44 year old managing partner jimmy dunn well uh you know it's
i'm sad but focused his company had lost its entire communication system nearly every piece
of paper a third of its people not to mention two of his best friends and top executives
senior managing partner herman sandler and chris quackenbush the man who ran the investment
banking business it was just incredible that 66 people could be missing and nothing nothing
just like they were gone just four days after the attack the survivors at sandler o'neill had
already moved into temporary quarters given to them by bank of america brokerage houses
and investment banks competitors in what had been the cutthroat world of wall street finance
offered equipment people and services whatever sandal o'neil needed to stay alive and so we're
here and we're doing business by monday morning with the market set to reopen they were moved in
and ready to go in spite of the fact that most of their stock traders were among the missing
kerry maltese who had run another division of the company
moved in and took charge this has been a horrible week as everybody knows and
it's amazing what's happened
and it's amazing everything we've had to do and i'm very proud of everything we have done here
i'm more sad about everything we've lost and that we had to do this
talking to the families was the worst thing we've got a lot of destruct families a lot
of people that are very upset people don't know what they're going to do uh and a lot
of kids and and wives missing their husbands um a few days ago we started collecting dna here
um these are things i never thought any of us would do um we've done them we're going
to continue to do every single thing we can do for the families for as long as it takes
but in order to do that one of the things we need to do is we need to be in business so today we're
in business and it is going to work we have no choice okay we're gonna do this and we're gonna
do it because not doing it's not gonna be an option and people want to do business with us
we've got several firms that are working for us for free i spoke to trident yesterday and asked
them if they could do something for us where we would split commissions of business we route
through them they said the only way they would do it is if the split is zero for them and all
for us everybody wants to help us so we can't not do this and we will do this at nine o'clock last
tuesday morning frankie and bruce were standing at their desk waiting for the market to open
so they could trade the market never opened and they never got to make those trades
the market is going to open today and we're going to make those trades
yes our friends are gone the desk is gone we're here and make no mistake bruce and
frankie are here and they're watching us and we're not going to disappoint them
and herman's watching us and herman he knows we can do this so very simply we're going to do this
as they waited for the first opening bell in six days the employees of sandler o'neill
along with the rest of the financial community stopped and prayed before returning to business
all right we're open they quickly discovered
that there were lots of things that needed to be worked out
what is with these phones guys pick up all your lines press on the red ones and hang them up
we're having give me hold on as you look we got a really big problem here nobody is on our lines and
they're all lit up you know what mark you're gonna have to use that is that phone good yeah we gotta
take that phone that's my phone we'd love to get an order somehow in some way the phone crisis
was solved within several hours but that was not the company's biggest problem there was a rumor
of afoot on wall street mistakenly reported that sandler o'neill had suspended operations so jimmy
dunn who had never done an interview before went live on cnbc to let his clients and the
financial community know that sandler o'neill was up and running and here to stay you know we don't
you know write songs we don't write novels we're wall street people we're going to respond as we
know how and respond they did the attack had not only wiped out most of the firm's computer system
the two people in the technology support division who would have known how to fix it were among the
missing we have no record of the deals and you know that we've done this year who the hell
so a group of programmers and software specialists who work for an old college roommate of jimmy duns
drove all night from chicago to pitch in and got most of the system up before the markets reopened
but no one from the outside could help the shell-shocked employees of sandra o'neil
with their grief the funeral was i know brutal it was brutal i talked to his grandmother and yeah
she was reliving all stories and started crying you know what are you gonna do
we're gonna get through it that's what we're gonna do
across the front of the office on spreadsheets normally used to report sales and earnings was a
long list of funerals wakes and memorial services and jimmy dunn was determined that there would be
sandler o'neill partners at all of them oh god my best friends on uh saturday and a guy that we
were in the same summer house with 20 years ago for six years is the same day same time and then
a great friend of mines that morning so i'll be both of those and herman's is on monday so yeah
i will miss him every day for the rest of my life the services have been heart-rending exhausting
and relentless in their sheer numbers two and three a day well into the month of october
battered firm has pledged to continue paying the salaries of its lost employees at least through
the end of the year plus bonuses and family benefits until 2006. a foundation has been set
up for long-term assistance but whatever they do founding partners fred price and tom o'neill the
o'neill and sandler o'neill say it can never be enough talk to a father who's lost his second son
through this tragedy a mother who lost her son she adored who couldn't wait for his career to develop
you know a wife who just had a baby two months ago who lost her husband it comes at you in waves
you know you'll be sitting there and as long as i keep on moving i'm all right and you stop and
you know it it's it's painful but if you say on adrenaline i mean i think there's uh i think you
always work on adrenaline i mean it's part of the business you hired a lot of young people
yeah we have sons and daughters of friends of yours absolutely has it made it harder for you
the fact that some of your best incredibly harder i don't know that i'll do it anymore frankly but
i mean i i need to do it again because it was a good thing and it's you know i can't let you know
i can't let them win i think all right how are we doing today how's this guy doing i
want to go to the wakes every day now seems to whipsaw between somber responsibilities and
the professional celebrations that mark sandler o'neill's return to the street so congratulations
boys that's the job you did on the island first deal we announced after 9 11. and look at that
all right hey billy boy hey you see this big man
where's that date september 18th where's that company san where o'neal here excellent
that's a goddamn pretty thing isn't it i'm about to go bedrock on two blocks of uh 30 years old
right now they are doing some deals holding onto their clients and feeling confident enough to
shop for permanent office space rebuilding a company they built from scratch 13 years ago
we're going to need a long-term quarters and uh you know herman sandler was a superb real
estate guy and this you know would not have been something that i would have known much
about or been able to do very good at but uh that that's changed now okay we we have in the
firm we had 170 people we're gonna we're gonna be about a hundred and we're gonna grow okay
stocks a little better there's green green i've not seen any of that got a couple greens
that's encouraging if i didn't know and i just walked in here i would have thought that you had
been in these offices forever uh well that's uh you know we we we're like uh you know to me where
i feel like we're at war i mean they attacked the united states of america they attacked the
capitalistic structure that we flourished under they attacked our little firm and you
know and they killed our friends so we we have a low tolerance for the petty issues right now
and that you know if you can't adapt and move well then then then you know then you have to
do something else so this is this is like combat to me right now they were intent on destroying
this country um i don't think we appreciated the depth of their hatred but i think for
every percentage that we might have underestimated them i think they've very much underestimated us