From Bob Niehaus:

I thank all members and staff of NABE present at the session Tuesday morning for the orderly evacuation of the meeting room and this organized effort to account for all attendees. I was in the breakfast meeting, listening to Bob Scott speak, when the first plane hit. My wife Margie was one level above us in the Greenhouse atrium restaurant. Upon impact, the glass roof and walls of the restaurant shattered and collapsed around her. She hid under a table with two other people until glass stopped falling, and then escaped into the plaza between the two towers. She left the area to the east and south, moving quickly after seeing the second plane strike the south tower. She got on the Staten Island ferry, followed police instructions to get on the train, and rode to the end of the line.

I had no trouble getting into the main lobby of the hotel. I did not know where Margie was, so I waited there for about 15 minutes, repeatedly calling our room and the health club on the 22nd floor to see if I could find her. Shortly after 9:00 am the Marriott staff escorted me from the hotel, and I learned that a plane had flown into the tower. I followed so many of my NABE colleagues and other guests, as well as many people fleeing the tower, and exited south onto Liberty Street at its intersection with West Side Highway.

As I was leaving, a fireman on the street called to us not to look up due to the falling debris, and to cover our heads if possible. As I walked across the street, with my suit jacket pulled up over my head, I heard the roar of jet engines. I could not find the source at first, due to echoes from buildings all around. I turned my gaze upward just in time to see the tail of the airliner disappear into the south tower, and knew that many of my assumptions about the world had just changed.

I moved away from the hotel a couple of blocks, to an apartment building with a lobby phone I could use. I called my son at his Merrill Lynch office in Los Angeles, reported where I was, and learned that Margie had called using her cell phone that she was safe. I then called the cell phone, but service was already disrupted. The police gradually pushed me back away from the hotel, and when the south tower collapsed I was about five blocks away. I joined a massive crowd walking through the ash storm toward Battery Park. I waited there for an hour or so, since the police would not let us move anywhere else. During this time the north tower collapsed, causing a second ash storm.

As soon as the police removed their barricade, I headed around the end of the island in the hope I could move uptown on the east side of the attack site. When I was about a block from the Staten Island Ferry terminal I found a working pay phone, and checked in with David again. While I was on the line, Margie got a cell phone call through, and David conferenced all three of us together. Margie said she was on Staten Island, and then was cut off. I told David I was going to Staten Island, and that he should keep trying to find out where Margie was. After the ferry crossing, I eventually found a working pay phone, and learned where to meet her. We found each other about 1:45 pm, roughly five hours after the first attack.

She had already found a motel room for us, and had gotten some food and toiletries. We showered and got some clean clothes and other supplies. We slept fitfully that night, and were on the move before dawn Wednesday morning. We hitched a ride across the Goethals bridge from a Port Authority officer, and got to the Alamo car rental agency just outside the Newark Airport. They gave us a great deal on one of the last rental cars available in the New York area, and we drove the 2,950 miles home to Santa Barbara. We arrived Saturday evening, after spending three nights on the road in Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, and Flagstaff, Arizona.

We felt comforted to see so much of our great and beautiful nation after witnessing first-hand the cruel attack on it. We both resolved to do everything we could to help prevent such atrocities from occurring in the future.

Thanks again for organizing this effort to maintain information on all NABE attendees. Good luck to everyone involved.

Thanks again for your calls and loving concern.