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By Gilda Farias Healy
I looked out the window and saw a commercial airliner slice like a knife through hot butter into New York’s World Trade Center Tower One. I’ll never forget the feeling of New York World Trade Center’s Tower Two swaying in a sudden updraft. Ordinarily, there was no reason for the tower to sway.
That beautiful, calm, sunny day was the day the world stood still and my new world renaissance began. September 11, 2001 is now my second birthday, though I was born on January 31. Named Gilda after my Portuguese aunt and the tragic heroine of the Italian opera Rigoletto, I am no tragedy.
Rather, I am a proud survivor. On 9/11, I evacuated from the thirty-sixth floor of Tower Two around eight-fifty a.m. I ignored instructions from the Port Authority to return to my desk, and joined the rushing sea of humanity down the stairs and out into the streets of downtown Manhattan.
”Never return to an evacuated building without a fire or police department escort,” a New York City fireman whom I’d met during my college days in the 1970’s once told me. The fact that I remembered his advice is the reason I am a good statistic, along with fifty thousand-plus other people, who walked out of the Trade Towers uninjured. That advice and the hand of God kept me moving that day as I exited through World Trade Center’s Tower Five.
En route, a falling chunk of glass tumbled from the tower and barely missed me before it crashed to the ground. I took it as a personal message from Al-Qaida, one for which I gladly did not accept delivery. Although I couldn’t avoid being held hostage by modern technology when my cell phone refused to work, no way was I willing to become a serious casualty of Al-Qaida!
I found safe refuge with a former boss who still had his corporate headquarters in the downtown area. From there I was able to call my husband Michael and let him know what had happened, and that I was safe. He told me to stay put where I’d be safe. I told him that I loved him, and would be home as soon as possible.
At ten-thirty a.m., World Trade Center Tower Two crashed to the ground and created a giant monster cloud that consumed the side streets of downtown New York. As I looked out the window from my old boss’s office, I shuddered at the thought that we were witnessing a dress-rehearsal for the end of the world. That day I left the New York I grew up in, and it’s never been the same since.
Finally back home in New Jersey that night, my husband and I went immediately to my mother’s house. Her phone rang nonstop that day with inquiries from family and friends about my safety. I knew it was imperative that I show mom that I was okay. An only child, I was all she had. Once there, she insisted that Michaeland I share with her a simple dinner she’d prepared. It was understood—in accordance with my Italian heritage—that we had to dine at her house and “break bread” together, or we couldn’t leave!
During the meal, I told mom the two things I’d learned that day. The first was to get out if you see an airplane go through a building that’s in front of you. The second was to make sure you go to the bathroom before you start your work day! Mom laughed until she almost cried, and congratulated me for my sense of humor, after all I’d been through.
Upon our return home, my mother-in-law, who was waiting outside our house for our return, came up to me, threw her arms around me, and said ”I’m glad you’re okay, you’re tough like your mother-in-law!” High praise indeed!
In 2003 I finally attended a 9/11 support group because I needed to relate to others who’d been through and understood what I’d experienced that day. I learned from this group that when you step back from a difficult situation, the answer will find you. Right after I started the support group, I began having flashbacks. I still saw the plane slicing through the tower. I felt the Tower sway all over again. I smelled burning debris even though I was safe at home in my husband’s warm embrace.
My New World Renaissance
Professionally, my world had already begun to change in January 2001. When my employer, a one hundred year-old New York conservative insurance brokerage firm, changed management from an employee-owned company to a privately-owned one, the new owners began the Machiavellian process of corporate house cleaning. By 2001, I’d given them twelve years of my life. Fortunately, I survived the first of many waves of corporate house cleaning.
The signs of corporate America’s “24/7” philosophy had already taken its toll on my health. Nine years before 9/11, I was diagnosed with the big three for a heart attack: Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. I’d heard all the horror stories about colleagues in the insurance industry who’d dropped dead at their desks as a result of a massive heart attack from all their job stress, and that wasn’t for me—I wasn’t interested in being a statistic then either.
As a New York licensed broker in property, casualty, personal lines, and baggage insurance, I was assigned to the fine arts department as a broker in 1998, and got to work with museums, art dealers, and art galleries. I loved my new assignment—with it I attended exhibition openings and partied with all sorts of very interesting people!
In 1999, I decided that it was time to try a new career. I’d seen an advertisement in the New York Times for the master’s program in museum professions at Seton Hall University and was accepted three weeks after I applied. I loved the arts and wanted to reinvent myself without the burden of corporate America’s stress. It didn’t hurt that the people I was trying to escape were helping me to do just that by reimbursing me for the cost of the tuition!
I maintained my sense of humor with all the stress of working full-time and going to school part time. I remember when I threatened co-workers that I’d quit my job in the insurance business and get a job in the New York City Sanitation Department because, after all, I was good at wading through trash and corporate house cleaning…in the meantime, I worked in New Jersey as I diligently concentrated on my master’s degree.
I sang in my Catholic Church choir and as a cantor—one who leads the congregation in song. I loved doing this because it provided me a safe place between the turmoil on earth and the heavens above. I learned that singing praise to God helps me to heal myself, and others as well. But it was a long time before I could sing—or even listen to—The Star Spangled Banner, God Bless America, or America the Beautiful because it reminded me of how much pain this whole nation endured.
A gentleman with an impressive resume, armed with a five year contract, was hired to work with me in May 2002. He and I worked together for a year and a half before he found an excuse to get rid of me. I survived a few more waves of corporate house cleaning until the day before my birthday in 2003. The pressure of the Machiavellian house cleaning process was too much for him to bear, and he suddenly resigned in May 2004. That same year I became a New Jersey licensed property and casualty producer out of necessity so I could continue to work in New Jersey. Now I could sell insurance from the Canadian Border to the shores of Cape May…
Finally finished with my masters at Seton Hall in 2007, I trail blazed by writing my thesis about disaster recovery and then designed a disaster recovery plan for the Trenton City Museum during my internship there. My mom, an avid supporter of me as a woman and as a trail blazer, died very suddenly in July 2009. She knew that I’d applied for my plan’s copyright. I received notice from the Library of Congress that my disaster recovery plan received a copyright in 2010.
The last full-time position I held was with a small main street insurance agency in northern New Jersey. The three agency owners—more interested in taking vacation than in the business—lost seven hundred thousand dollars in income in 2008 at the start of the recession. They laid me off the day after Christmas.
Epilogue
In the end, I was glad. I didn’t want to be held hostage any longer by corporate America. Corporate America is digging its own grave and I don’t want to be buried yet! A survivor, I’m now trail blazing while I volunteer for both the National Guard Museum as a collections management coordinator/consultant, and for The Center for World War II Studies and Conflict Resolution as an archivist.
I think I found the answer for me in this ailing economy, and that it was there all the time. I am about to embark on a new venture as a consultant. With all this experience under my belt, I have a world of love to give, along with expertise in insurance, fine arts, and disaster recovery, and I’m just getting started!
I’m also a member of a 1940’s era musical group called Down Melody Lane, part of the Center’s Commemoration Committee. In December 2011 I sang God Bless America in public for the first time since 9/11 and brought down the house. I hadn’t gotten over the painful memories that song evoked from that tragic day, but singing it helped reinforce that I’m still here, I’m still standing. People think, yeah get over it, but I didn’t sing it because I wanted sympathy, I sang it because I want people to know—I am a survivor.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gilda Healy is a lifelong resident of New Jersey who holds a B.A. with honors from Marymount Manhattan College and an M.A. in Museum Professions from Seton Hall University. She is a resident-licensed property and casualty insurance broker in New York and New Jersey. Using her insurance and museum professions backgrounds, Gilda loves all aspects of her work - for the National Guard Militia Museum in Sea Girt, NJ, in Collections Management and as an Archivist at Brookdale Community College for the Center for World War II Studies. Gilda is launching her own business as a consultant for Property, Casualty, Fine Arts Insurance, and Disaster Recovery.
Gilda Farias Healy
Gilda Healy Consultants
www.linkedin.com/in/gildahealy
gildacanhelp@gmail.com
732-495-3102
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