Showing posts with label Verizon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Verizon. Show all posts

Friday, September 10, 2021

20 Years Later, 9/11 Remembered

Empty Sky Memorial in Jersey City
Empty Sky Memorial, Liberty State Park, NJ, 2020

I'm reposting this from last year, having again updated a Pinterest site of photos and stories recalling my former Verizon colleagues and their heroic response to 9/11. You can reach it at https://www.pinterest.com/bvar/verizons-response-to-911/.

Included is a booklet from 2005 about the history and recovery of 140 West Street, the old headquarters building that was severely damaged at Ground Zero... and from which workers snaked temporary cables from open windows to get the New York Stock Exchange up and running just days later, beginning our national recovery.

Here are links to a half dozen related personal posts on this site (from most recent to oldest):

My friend, Fay Shapiro, also kindly published this and other posts from PR people on the CommPro.biz site earlier today.

I hope you can make sense of it all.

Even 20 years later, I can't.

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

About Stanley Fink, Undefeated to the Last

Leaving the building, two years ago today. (Kim Ancin photo)

Two years ago today, I left a job at Verizon where I had spent nearly two decades directing financial and corporate communications.

At that time, I wrote about people who had made a mark on my career. Tonight, I wish to add another name: my late mentor, Stanley Fink.

When friends at PRSA and IABC recently asked me to speak to their chapters about the basics of financial communications, I had to think back a bit. I now work in the nonprofit sector, at what Stanley would call an "eleemosynary institution."

I realize now that he is the reason I chose to work in financial communications.

Stanley was a member of the New York State Assembly beginning in 1969. He became Majority Leader in 1977 and 1978, and Speaker from 1979 until he left politics for the private sector in 1986.

I did PR for him when he was Government Affairs VP at NYNEX until his untimely death from cancer in 1997. A human dynamo, quick-witted and full of bluster, Stanley was one of the smartest (and most appreciative) people I’ve known.

Stanley loved to kibbitz with NYNEX’s Investor Relations pros. Since regulatory issues played a big role in the Verizon predecessor company’s outlook, he met often with investors. He was passionate about financial matters and closely followed the market. I recall conversations about this or that pharmaceutical stock, which (I realized only after learning of his diagnosis) also had personal meaning for him.

A Democrat from Brooklyn, Stanley had a long political track record of using his influence and financial acumen to ensure that government provided services to people who couldn't provide services for themselves.

Mr. Speaker, circa 1980.

He was the driving force behind transportation infrastructure investments that fueled New York City's growth, and he pushed for more money for schools, notably increasing state support for the City University of New York.

Stanley taught me that financial literacy was important because... it's not about money; it's about people.

In that way, communicating about money is a sacred trust.

I like to think Stanley would have been proud of me for landing the financial communications role at Verizon in 2002, and prouder still that I did my job for so many years without having to cut any ethical corners. I had great leadership support in that regard, and I don't think I let Stanley down.

Where I fell short, upon further review, was in not emulating his indomitable confidence.

I recall Stanley, fingers locked, pumping his hands in the air from side to side as if he had just won a World Wrestling Federation match.

"That's the way I always walked off the Assembly floor after a vote," he said with a big smile and a twinkle in his eye. "You always claim victory, no matter what the outcome."

"You fight as hard as you can to get what you want, make the best out of what you get, and return to fight another day."

I only wish I were as bold.

Here's to Stanley Fink, never to be forgotten and undefeated to the last.

Sunday, September 8, 2019

9/11: A Lesson in Accountability

There is no such thing as accountability if you do your job and the next person can't do their's. Accountability means we all win together.

As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I again updated a Pinterest site I've been curating to preserve stories about Verizon's efforts to restore communications services following the terrorist attacks.

The site includes links to treasures in a variety of media, including a 38-minute video about the heroic colleagues I was proud to work beside in 2001.

One new link is Maria Bartiromo's interview on last year's 9/11 anniversary with Denny Strigl, the former CEO of Verizon Wireless. He talked about the tech sustainability "lessons learned" in the aftermath of the attacks.

Another lesson learned was articulated this past May by Verizon's former Chairman and CEO, Ivan Seidenberg. Having written "Verizon Untethered," a history of the company, Ivan sat down with entrepreneur and Internet personality Gary Vaynerchuk to promote the book on the #AskGaryVee YouTube show.

Here's a link to the show, if you aren't already one of Gary's 2.2 million subscribers. It's a fascinating 51-minute interview on a variety of business topics. At the 29:15 mark, Ivan begins talking about a favorite chapter in his book: "the story of how our company was able to deliver after 9/11."

In the end, this story is an important life lesson about the meaning of accountability. Here's a partial transcript of what Ivan had to say. It speaks for itself:

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Ivan and Gary
All of Wall Street was out; all of Manhattan was out... The next morning: still flames, still trying to look for survivors. Calls began coming in from all over the country about, "When is the Stock Exchange going to be up and running?"...

The trading partners on Wall Street... couldn't get their people into the buildings. They didn't have alternative locations. So, I remember Dick Grasso, who was the Chairman of the Stock Exchange at the time, called a meeting of everybody in the city...

Our people basically said, "We could do the following, but here's all the things you will have to do"...

The story here was great. We were running cables out of [the windows of] buildings. We were doing all sorts of things that we needed to do. But we were also helping other people do their jobs.

So this is the lesson on 9/11 for us: accountability. There is no such thing as accountability if you do your job and the next guy can't do his. Accountability means we all win together.

We ended up committing to getting the Stock Exchange up and running the following Monday. In the process of doing that, we developed relationships with the top 60 or 70 trading partners -- the Goldman Sachs, the Merrill Lynches, all those companies -- to help them make sure they could open their facilities, they had enough circuits to get things done, they had the generators and the power, and everything else that needed to occur to get the country up and running.

It was one of the greatest experiences of our careers, because it was a big deal... and it taught our company, back in 2001, what real accountability is.

Real accountability is not just doing your job, but doing your job and helping the people you work with do their jobs.

Friday, June 28, 2019

Goodbye, Verizon: Remember Our Names

My ghost
Here are three thoughts today as I leave Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic, formerly NYNEX) after 34 years to begin a new chapter in my life.

1.  No one is truly gone until their name is no longer mentioned.


This is a universal truth, expressed in different ways in different cultures over many centuries by artists and poets and philosophers.

To put it another way, it's our duty to remember those who came before us.

Here are five names of coworkers who have died, and who still have a special place in my heart.

First, from NYNEX, is Tony Pappas. He is and has always been the soul of Verizon's media relations department.

Tony Pappas
Tony was one of my first bosses. He was a legendary New York City PR executive who was a trusted confidante of journalists like Jimmy Breslin, Steve Dunleavy (who coincidentally died just this week), Pete Hamill, Larry Sutton and Verizon's own Steve Marcus. Tony cannot be described in a few words. If you're a movie aficionado, as Tony was, think Peter O'Toole in "My Favorite Year."

Tony lived a long and happy life. He passed away a few months ago, and I attended services surrounded by his family at a graveside in Rutherford, NJ, where he's buried near the poet William Carlos Williams.

This is just to say how appropriate that is.

On a more tragic and somber note, I want to mention the names of contemporaries who all died much too young.

Robin Flowers
Robin Flowers was my great friend at NYNEX. I lost track of him when he became a vice president at AT&T, then heard the sad news that he had died of multiple sclerosis in 2012.

A big man with a booming laugh, we did our share of drinking together when we were very young. But, fortunately, we also had colleagues who made up for all the brain cells we may have destroyed.

One was Jamie DePeau, an incredible spirit who died of cancer in 2016. She was the smartest of us all.

Jamie DePeau
Jamie's wildly successful post-NYNEX second act – as a senior marketing VP for TIAA-CREF and then as CMO for Lincoln Financial – inspires me today as I embark on my own new journey.

At Jamie's memorial service, I marveled at the outpouring of love and affection among family, friends and coworkers that overflowed a church that morning in Ridgewood, NJ.

The fourth name, from Bell Atlantic, is Jeff Gluck. He died of ALS in 2012, leaving behind a wonderful family, including still-young children.

Jeff was my tech guru. We shared a love of software applications and gadgets. My fondest memory of him is one morning in the early 1990s, after he installed one of the first browsers to view sites on something called the World Wide Web.

Jeff Gluck
A group of us huddled around Jeff at offices at 1095 Ave. of the Americas in New York, as he taught us about the Internet. "Where would you like to go?" Jeff asked excitedly. "I can take you anywhere in the world from this keyboard."

Our colleague Carol Fessler said, "I'd like to go to The Louvre!"

So Jeff typed a few keystrokes – and as the page loaded we realized unexpectedly, embarrassingly, that we were arriving at a site selling pornography. That truly was an appropriate introduction to our brave new world.

The fifth name, from Verizon, is Joellen Brown.

Joellen Brown
We all mourned her sudden, accidental death earlier this year. Joellen was a kind and thoughtful editor, and she wrote speeches for CEOs Ray Smith, Chuck Lee, Ivan Seidenberg and Lowell McAdam, retiring before the Hans Vestberg era began.

This past April, at another memorial service in another town, I again witnessed a room overflowing with love and affection for a life well-lived. Current and former Verizon colleagues traveled from all over the country – from Texas and West Virginia and Florida – to pay their respects and celebrate Joellen's life.

The most meaningful personal tribute I've received in my career was written in a card a dear friend gave me before the going-away party for a group of us last night. She wrote that Joellen told her when they first started working together that "if you can't find me, go find Varettoni..."

I hope I never let you down, Joellen.

2. I will never forget the Verizon PR team, and I will always mention their names with respect and love.


I'm awed by how talented, hard-working and creative the Verizon PR team is.

Here's our secret: we know that as important as the work itself is, how the work gets done is just as important. The team has always been at its best when we've shown up for each other, and when we've known we could depend on each other.

The work itself? Verizon is a company that connects people and helps them communicate. It deploys and enables new and life-changing technologies and applications.

I truly believe that Verizon is building a better future for those who will come after us.

As a company spokesperson for most of my career, that belief has made my job very easy. All the journalists I've worked with know that everyone they talk to has an agenda.

My agenda has been transparent: to be an effective advocate for all the people who make up the heart and soul of Verizon.

To all the Verizon customer service representatives, field technicians and engineers; all the Verizon Wireless store employees, executive assistants and office managers, and sales and support people; all the IT, technology and finance professionals: I admire your talents and I appreciate how difficult your jobs are.

Mine was a privileged position. I hope I always honored those I represented. Whenever I spoke on behalf of Verizon, I always knew I was standing on the shoulders of giants.

Speaking of which...

3. Here's to Robert J. Varettoni.


Robert J. Varettoni
My Dad, who died in 2005, also worked for Verizon for 34 years.

He started in sales at New York Telephone and eventually became a customer service director at NYNEX, then Verizon. He got his job at "the phone company" in 1956 through the influence of his buddy on the U.S.S. Midway and in the Navy Reserve, John A. Coleman, whose own father had been chairman of the NYSE.

Dad claimed he had no influence in getting me a job here in 1985. I find that hard to believe.

Also hard to believe (and including the few years our careers overlapped): tomorrow morning, for the first time in 63 years, there will be no "Bob Varettoni" working at Verizon.

---------

Finally, here's something we all can believe in, no matter where we work. It's something Dad discovered through his colleagues Vinnie Merrill, Eileen Vodola and Ed Small:

There are people working beside you today who you will love and revere for your entire life.

So ask yourself: How are you showing up for them?

Our time together is really very short and unpredictable and precious.

How will people remember your name?

---

About the top photo: Dad's office used to be at 1095 Ave. of the Americas, where Verizon currently has its NYC headquarters. I have fond memories of visiting Dad there when I was a boy, so I worked from "1095" one day this week. This is a reflection of myself waiting for the elevator home.

Sunday, March 31, 2019

In Bushwick, Where Everything Is Temporary

This mural is part of The Bushwick Collective, an outdoor gallery featuring works from some of the world's best street artists.

I visited there twice in 2016. After the first visit, I wrote about a work colleague who had died too young, Robin Flowers.

We had begun our PR careers together, and in 1987 we found ourselves stationed in Bushwick after a devastating fire had destroyed telephone service.

The defining characteristic of the place, even back then, was how temporary everything seemed.

One example: With our company under pressure to restore phone service quickly, our Marketing department had arranged for T-shirts for the workers on site that read, "We're working as fast as we can!" The grizzled operations executive leading the recovery efforts opened the first box of shirts and said, "We can’t use these!" -- since the phrase could mean the exact opposite in a unionized setting... a work-to-rule excuse. As soon as he uttered those words, our PR vice president grabbed the box from Robin's hands and hurled it into a nearby dumpster.

Revisiting Bushwick in 2016, I was struck by the area's change and revitalization in barely two decades. The once-impoverished community had become home to vibrant street art and commerce.

I carved Robin's initials into one wall there as a makeshift memorial -- my life's only attempt at street art. I was delighted and encouraged to find the "RF" still there a few months later when I returned to take photos on my own.

---------

Three years later -- last Saturday -- I returned to The Bushwick Collective a third time and saw that Robin's initials had long ago been painted over.

I was with a group of talented photographers from New Jersey's Black Glass Gallery, but I didn't have the heart to take many photos. The street art was just as compelling. Here's a site where you can see the great photos my friends took that day.

But me? Just hours earlier, I had learned that another work friend -- Joellen Brown -- had been been in an accident and was in an intensive unit in Philadelphia with a head injury.

I wandered aimlessly around Bushwick on my own, preoccupied with thoughts and prayers for Joellen, until I came to the corner of Johnson and Gardner.

There, I stopped in my tracks, and took photo after photo of the mural that accompanies this post. It's a work by Michel Velt, an urban artist from the Netherlands. The wavy-haired model, according to Michel's Instagram site, is Nathaly Smits.

It wasn't the mural's beauty that transfixed me. It was a rare sense of familiarity and recognition. When I returned home and compared my 2019 photos to my 2016 photos, I realized that this was the only mural that I had photographed in the neighborhood that had survived for three years.

That’s the thing about Bushwick. As beautiful and poignant and playful and life-affirming as the street art is, it is meant to be temporary. That's the point of it all. The murals here survive for six months, maybe a year... but then they are painted over... and the cycle begins again.

Nothing lasts forever.

In Bushwick, everything is temporary. Except maybe this mural.

--------- 

The very next morning, I learned that Joellen had died.

My friend was a wonderful writer, but sometimes there are no words.

I took this photo of Joellen when she visited Verizon offices in New Jersey around Christmas 2017, right before she retired, so that it might be included in "Verizon Untethered," a history that was published last spring. She's included in the acknowledgements: "Joellen Brown, part of the Verizon executive communications team for more than 30 years, helped to provide historical context and research materials. She also reviewed the text for accuracy multiple times."

She isn't listed as one of the book's authors. If you look back at any of the half dozen speeches she wrote that were published over the years in "Vital Speeches of the Day" (a prestigious monthly collection of the best speeches in the world), you won't find her name there either.

Instead, you'll find a transcript of Bell Atlantic executive Ray Smith at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. In 1999, he talked about hate speech on the Internet. Joellen titled the speech, "Civility Without Censorship." She wrote: "Instead of fearing the Internet's reach, we need to embrace it -- to value its ability to connect our children to the wealth of positive human experience and knowledge... We need to fight destructive rhetoric with constructive dialogue -- hate speech with truth -- restrictions with greater access."

In 2010, at the Economic Club of Washington DC, Verizon executive Ivan Seidenberg used Joellen's words to sound more presidential than a real-life president: "We need accountable leaders in government, as well as in the business community, who reject the false choices between job creation or deficit reduction, growth or sustainability, serving consumers or investors, managing for the short term or the long term, being profitable or doing things right. Real leadership isn't about making false choices; it's about finding solutions to real problems."

In 2016, I asked Joellen to contribute a blog post to the fledgling website of the New Jersey Chapter of the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators). She readily agreed, and what a treat it is to have a record of Joellen's observations about speechwriting in her own words. That post has been widely re-distributed in the PR community, and you can read it here.

Here too is more of Joellen in her own words, speaking about her endowment to Ohio Wesleyan University in honor of her sister.

If you want a sense of her life, please read her obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer, which includes loving detail provided by her good friend, our former colleague Jay Grossman.

If you want to make a meaningful difference in Joellen's memory, please consider donating to Philadelphia Young Playwrights.

Finally, if you are looking for life lessons, I urge you to visit The Bushwick Collective. You will be reminded there, amid all the beauty and the chaos, that nothing lasts forever. There is no refuge in art. And sometimes there are no words.

The only thing that may transcend time is our impact on the lives of others after we are gone.

This is how Joellen Brown will be long-remembered.

Friday, October 19, 2018

You Can Call Me Al (Smith Dinner, 2018)

View this post on Instagram

About last night... I was honored to be able to attend the NY Archdiocese’s Al Smith Dinner, a quintessentially New York tradition named for the former NY governor, dubbed “The Happy Warrior,” who made an historic run as the first Catholic nominee for the U.S. presidency in 1928. At this annual politically-charged dinner in October, politicians traditionally poke fun at each other and set aside differences in an event that now raises multiple millions of dollars each year to support charities that serve New York’s neediest children. Outgoing UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, introduced by comedian Jim Gaffigan, poked fun at herself — although both she and Cardinal Dolan seriously addressed the latest scandals making headlines in the Catholic Church. Verizon, where I work, has been a major contributor to many charitable organizations, and the company’s chairman, Lowell McAdam, received this year’s Happy Warrior Award. He had this to say: “My career at one of the world’s leading tech companies has left me feeling, on the whole, very optimistic and confident about what lies ahead.” I feel the same way. #AlSmith #CatholicCharities

A post shared by Bob Varettoni (@bvarphotos) on


Here are more photos, from my highlighted story on Instagram.

Sunday, September 9, 2018

Revisiting My 9/11 Diary Pages

Last week I mentioned updating a Pinterest site about Verizon's response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The site also links to words I originally shared on the company's intranet site on the 2002 anniversary, when employees were encouraged to post memories and tributes.

I had a panoramic view of the 9/11 attacks in New York from Verizon offices on the 32nd Floor of 1095 Avenue of the Americas. My job then, as it is today, was as a media spokesperson. I worked straight through for the next two days, returning home the evening of my 15th wedding anniversary on 9/13.

This week I recalled that in 2001 I was keeping a "Baby Diary" -- so named because I started it when my first daughter was born, a decade earlier.

What follows are edited versions several Baby Diary entries at the time, interspersed with photos I took when assisting the New York Archdiocese with media relations during Pope Francis' visit to the 9/11 Museum in 2015:

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10/6/01 - I am still at a loss about what to write. I tried to write that evening (9/11), when I found myself in a small room at the Roosevelt Hotel on Lexington and 45th. I couldn’t; not then.

[My wife] Nancy called to alert me to the disaster. I didn’t think much of it after I spoke to her, figuring that it must have been a tiny, misdirected plane from Teterboro that accidentally hit one of the towers. However, I noticed headlines pop up on the NewsEdge system on my desktop, and I went to the side of my floor that faces the Trade Center to look out the window.

I was taken aback by what I saw. This was no small plane, and I knew from looking at it that this would not be small damage. I thought “hundreds of lost lives; billions in cleanup and reconstruction and lawsuits — this is bad.” It didn’t occur to me at that point that the tower might collapse, or even that it was a terrorist attack.

I watched with a group of co-workers as smoke billowed from the Trade Center. We had a clear, unobstructed view of the scene from a wall of ceiling-high windows. The scene was far enough away that we felt safe, but close enough to be dramatic — as if we were watching a 3-D movie on a huge, clear screen.

The scene especially shook one woman in the group, Kathleen, who normally lives and works in Texas. She witnessed the first plane hit the tower. Her reaction was unnerving, but genuine, emphasizing the gravity of the situation.

Soon Peter, my boss, was hurrying back from a meeting on the 39th Floor executive offices. He pronounced that it was certainly a commercial airliner that had hit the tower. Peter, as always, was wonderful throughout that first day and the days that followed, although he sometimes played the role of a one-man Greek chorus. After the second plane hit, he predicted tens of thousands of deaths and later said we would smell the stench of dead bodies in New York in the days to follow. On those important points, he was wrong.


In those first moments, I tried to read the news accounts of the first plane, but I kept circling back to the scene at the southern window. I was debating to myself whether I should keep a breakfast meeting I had arranged with Greg, a former co-worker at "Catholic New York" who is now an on-air financial newscaster on CNNfn.

Greg had called me recently to set up a breakfast since he does not have to arrive at his studio at the Nasdaq center near my office until late morning. That morning, before work, I had driven Nancy crazy as I searched for a wallet-sized photo of the kids so I could show Greg. We only had 5x7s, the family photo that was my Father’s Day gift, and I had that photo stuffed in my jacket pocket throughout the next three days.

So I wasn’t really paying attention when I heard a collective scream from the group who had gathered at the window following the first attack. Something else had happened. When I focused, I saw a billow of fire coming from the other tower.

Several immediate thoughts leapt to mind. "This is a terrorist attack." Then, "Why wasn’t the second plane shot down before it hit the tower?" Detached and dispassionate, I saw my co-workers involved and shaken. Jane, who works in Employee Communications, came up with tears in her eyes and asked, "What do we do now?" I hesitated, because my first thought was to respond, "We say a prayer." But I self-censored my reply because I thought it would be pompous and over-dramatic, so I simply said, "I don’t know."

Then, I returned to my desk, where headlines confirmed that this was a terrorist attack -- and I left the building.

I wasn’t frightened, but I had promised to meet Greg at the Royalton, 44 W. 44th, at 9:15 -- and since I couldn’t contact him (our cell phones weren’t working) and couldn’t do anything productive at the office, I felt I should at least attempt to meet him there. I also felt relieved to have an excuse to leave the building for a few minutes. When I arrived at the restaurant, which is only a two-minute walk from my office, it surprised me to see a few diners having leisurely breakfasts. I felt uneasy waiting inside among these people, so I waited for Greg outside the front door. I soon saw him hurrying down the sidewalk.

"Did you hear what happened?" he said. "I just dropped off my kid at school and I was on the subway and someone said there was an explosion at the World Trade Center."

"Both towers," I said. "Two planes."

"Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center?" he repeated, in disbelief.

"You have to go to work," I said, and we shook hands and wished each other luck.

Soon back at the office, I kept wandering by the southern window on the 32nd Floor, where the crowd was still gathered. All the TVs on the floor were turned to the news stations. After a while, I heard another collective gasp and cry, but I saw only a cloud of smoke. It was 9:59 a.m. The South Tower had collapsed.

I was not frightened. I knew officials had grounded all planes, and I figured that by now the military would shoot down anything that approached New York. It surprised me to read one news story about a plane possibly hitting the Pentagon. Just hysterical overreaction, I thought. But when I read a headline about another plane crashing in Pennsylvania, I immediately believed the report about the Pentagon, and I immediately assumed that passengers had given up their own lives to crash the other plane in the middle of nowhere.

Around 10:28 a.m., when the North Tower collapsed, our phones were ringing incessantly. A young New York Times reporter wanted to know if Verizon’s calling volumes had increased. My colleague Eric took the call and stared in disbelief at the phone before calmly telling the reporter, whose deadline was not for another 10 hours, "We’ll get back to you."

Everyone in the office knew this story was much, much bigger than anything involving phone service.

Peter then informed us we had to evacuate the upper floors of our building, by order of the police. I felt safe where I was. I had access to phone lines and computer hookups, Internet info, email, printers, news feeds and TV monitors. I didn’t relish the thought of taking my laptop and non-working cell phone and trying to work from another location. I stayed at my post and wrote a quick statement for Peter and Eric, which served as our talk points that day and our news release statement.

Still, Peter insisted we vacate the floor. "Non-essential" staff was sent home. I can only imagine what a nightmare it must have been trying to get home that morning or early afternoon. The media staff reported to the fifth floor, where phones and a temporary "command center" had been set up.

Arriving at the fifth floor, we were told to report to the fourth floor -- and our command center turned out to be simply the cubicles of other people who had been sent home. In a nearby conference room, Operations people huddled around a speakerphone to sort out the impact on phone service. It took hours to get a temporary connection to our LAN to once again have access to email, news reports and a printer. Until early afternoon I had no more information to offer reporters than our initial statement.

That’s pretty much how the first day passed... Confused, sometimes conflicting, snippets of information from the open Operations conference call line. A lot of hurry, followed by a lot of waiting. It often seemed I was helping no one, and I worried about home. Still, my family knew I was safer where I was. By then all bridges and tunnels out of the city had been closed. Airports were closed and would remain so for several days. If you were in New York past 3 p.m. that day, you’d be in New York overnight.


10/7/01 - Also that first day, I recalled two curious incidents I had witnessed just days earlier involving police and firemen.

One morning I saw a Port Authority police officer pass by the fruit stand on the sidewalk near the corner of 8th and 40th. The officer reached down and grabbed a plum as he walked past, with no intention of paying for it. He bit into it and gave me a threatening look. I felt as if I was at fault because I had noticed him swipe the plum.

Then, the morning before the terrorist attacks, I saw a fire truck cause a commotion on 8th Ave., right outside the Port Authority. Traffic was backed up in front of the building, yet the truck flashed its lights and sirens, with one tire on the sidewalk, until it broke through the traffic and made a right on 42nd. The truck had come close to hitting a few pedestrians, eliciting shouts and curses from those on the street.

When the truck completed its turn, it immediately turned off its siren and joined the more free-flowing traffic on 42nd St. Walking, I even caught up with the same truck and watched it make a leisurely right onto Broadway and head downtown. It was full of boisterous white males, lounging and laughing. It was absurd. The only explanation was that they were responding to an alarm that had been lifted as they made their reckless turn.

Since they were heading south that day, on 9/11 I thought of them again. I wondered whether they, or the petty-theft police officer, had been killed, like so many other firefighters and policemen, when the World Trade Center collapsed.


There’s no rhyme or reason; there’s no justice. The heroes are very human -- and the hijackers, also very human, would not have committed suicide without what they thought was a good reason. I remember watching scenes from the Gulf War several years ago. I had commented to Nancy, "Someday someone will blow up the Empire State building, and we won’t know why."

As always, it’s difficult to discern the truth. You read spy novels, or the conspiracy theories that abound about the Kennedy assassination or after any other emotional incident, and you’d think the world is run by smart, powerful people. You’d think the great masses of us are well-protected or easily-manipulated, depending on the situation.

In reality, we proved ourselves to be an uncontrollable rabble of a society to let this happen. Airline security, the CIA, the armed forces, border guards, our political leadership... all were caught napping. The hijackers weren’t sophisticated, moneyed or clever. When President Bush threatened reprisals against "all who harbored or helped" the terrorists, I thought, "What? Bomb the flight academy in Florida where they taught the hijackers how to fly? Burn down Paterson, where several of the hijackers lived? Raid the travel agency in Totowa that sold one-way tickets to a hijacker?"

I’ve also read that on the other side of the globe many people have twisted their own "truths." They believe hijackers didn’t destroy the Trade Center. They insist it’s a CIA conspiracy to make it look like a terrorist attack to elicit public support for further U.S. military action. This proves that people can be foolish all over the world. This should be a commonality that brings people together, but perhaps people are too foolish to realize even this.

After Mass that first Sunday, our church organist played "God Bless America" after the closing hymn. Nancy and I sang along with the congregation. Earlier that week, all our neighbors’ homes displayed American flags, and we put up an American flag too. Meanwhile, a political commentator on a late-night talk show called "Politically Incorrect" made a crude point that it had been "cowardly" for the U.S. to launch cruise missiles on targets thousands of miles away during the Gulf War. The commentator later apologized for his remark, but the White House press secretary commented that Americans, in times like these, "have to watch what they say and watch what they do."

Watch what you say? What is America, if it has turned into a country where you have to watch what you say? What were we in church singing about, exactly?


10/9/01 - People are being nicer to each other in the days since 9/11. People are more polite. When someone asks how you are, both question and answer are no longer automatic.

Just days after the tragedy, while waiting on one of New Jersey Transit’s long lines to catch a late 165 bus home, a young woman wandered to the platform and shouted obscenities to someone on the other end of her cell phone. Others generally tolerate this kind of behavior because confronting the offender only makes the situation worse.

But this woman looked into the sad eyes of everyone else on line and stopped in mid-sentence. She shut off her cell phone and after a moment’s pause simply walked away from the platform.


10/10/01 - As I’ve mentioned, on the evening of 9/11, I stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel. By coincidence Verizon had scheduled a senior management meeting for the next day, and the company had reserved a block of hotel rooms for the now-canceled event. It would otherwise have been very difficult for me to stay anywhere but my office that night.

That first night, I couldn’t stop watching the news reports. At a business breakfast the other day, an anthropologist called this typical reaction "a voyeuristic indulgence of the disaster pornography being broadcast."

I went to bed late that night even though I had volunteered to be the first one in the next day at 4:30 a.m.

Walking to work at 4:15 that morning was one of the most memorable several minutes of my life. I walked from Lexington and 45th because there were no taxis; no cars on the street at all. The streets seemed oddly lit, and on every corner stood an armed police or military officer.

I held my Verizon badge aloft to these people as I walked past. In front of the main branch of the Library, 5th Ave. had been blocked off and barricaded. A military officer with a drawn machine gun guarded the barricade. Huddled behind him, in the middle of the avenue, three police officers warmed their hands around a makeshift fire. It was a scene out of Bosnia, but instead I was in Occupied America.

With sunrise, things turned less dramatic. It was another work day, with fewer people on the streets and filled with routine media calls. Reporters would ask if you were all right, and you’d ask the same in return. The Wall Street Journal’s offices had been destroyed, but the Journal managed to publish anyway. The reporters covering us worked from Dow Jones offices in Jersey City.

About mid-afternoon, the wind shifted to the north, and everyone in the office became aware of an acrid smell... a grim and now palpable reminder of the tragedy. Downtown, the site was still burning, and this was the smell of burning jet fuel. In my heart, I kept thinking about what Peter had said about decaying bodies, but in my head I knew that most bodies had been pulverized... simply turned to dust.

Read "9/11 Memories of an Invisible Man"
That night, I was glad to get back to my hotel room, where I turned on the air conditioning, watched the TV news coverage and showered for a long, long time.

The coverage, which had been valuable during the initial days, has now lapsed into feature stories covering every imaginable aspect of the incident. At one point a TV commentator said, "It’s a good thing the terrorists didn’t crash a plane into the Indian Point nuclear plant. That would have caused a much larger loss of life." I wondered why the commentator thought it useful to give people the idea if they haven’t thought of it already.

One of the most touching reports involved a man I knew. He had been a tough executive at a Verizon predecessor company, and his son had been a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the North Tower. His son was only 25, and Doug had called in to a live newscast on the subject. He started to cry when he described his son’s life.


After I returned home on 9/13, I moved back to my usual office on 9/14 and handled usual assignments. Peter asked me to help a business journalist for The Independent. He happened to be in town and was now working on a story about the long-term economic impact of the attack.

The reporter had gained a reputation as a futurist because of a book he wrote. “It was pretty much on target," he said, "except that I missed the whole Internet aspect." I took him to interview our vice president of corporate strategy, and I apologized because the elevator guard searched his bag. "Not to worry," he told me, “This kind of thing is the way of life back home in London.”

And now the elevator guards search my own bags every morning when I report to work. It’s as if I’ve been posing as a mild-mannered phone company employee for over 16 years just so I can now sneak a bomb into the building.

Meanwhile, my daughters seem to be handling this as well as expected. Cathy is saving all issues of our local paper, The Record. At first, she didn’t want to be alone in the house, but now she wouldn’t mind it. Younger Maddy’s initial reaction was to get angry because "everyone wants to keep talking and talking about this."

One day, after Cathy was online on AOL, she questioned Nancy about why she wasn’t telling her the things in the special "what to tell kids section" that AOL had posted. Cathy and I also both remember, with much guilt, how when we used to play Microsoft Flight Simulator together on the computer many months ago, we used to deliberately crash our simulated planes into the Trade Center towers.


10/11/01 - It’s now a month since Sept. 11, and I’ve written 10,000 words since – and still nothing makes sense.

Needless to say, our 15th wedding anniversary wasn’t very festive, but our small family was happy to be safe and in one place. Life at work has returned to normal "or whatever nomal is these days," as the latest cliche goes.

Nancy and I are buying new bedroom furniture for Cathy. She picked what she wanted from an Ikea catalog, but Nancy was reluctant to purchase so much furniture sight unseen. She kept promising to drive to the Ikea showroom in Elizabeth to check things out. Nancy finally did so early last week after Cathy kept placing pink "Take Us to Ikea" Post-It notes around the house.

Cathy and Maddy were playing a running game of "Barbie Village" in Maddy’s room about two weeks after the terrorist attacks. It was cute in the beginning, with dolls and houses and streets and Barbie cars in a neat makeshift town on Maddy’s floor. But urban blight soon took its toll, and Maddy’s room once again became a mess. This led to another talk with the kids about the state of their rooms, and this time Maddy has taken the criticism to heart because her room has been clean for days. Our 8-year-old-soon-to-be-30 has even hung a rewriteable poster board, where she now jots "to do" lists for herself.

Meanwhile, Nancy bought frozen margarita mix this past weekend, and Maddy crushed the ice for us. Cathy innocently asked, "Is this a drink kids would like?"


I’m writing this during my morning commute into work. New York City is shrouded in mist, so I can’t see its hollowed skyline from this bus.

Last night, I went to a play, "Contact." It was an outing for about 20 Public Relations colleagues held at Lincoln Center on the night of our previously scheduled annual planning meeting. The play featured marvelous dancers, set in scenes involving swing music. At curtain call, the music switched to Van Morrison’s "Moondance," which the cast danced to with a casual and fluid joy.

This set the stage for a wonderful walk home for me on a clear, cool night, more than 20 blocks down 9th Ave. to the Port Authority. There were many odd and curious sights among the neon lights and the shadows. I couldn’t guess what I might encounter from one street to the next. Near 50th Street, a homeless man began coherently cursing the historical Cleopatra. It made no sense, and yet it made perfect sense. All the people around me were diverse and full of stories. An uneasy excitement filled the air.

I hope, when my daughters get older, that New York will still be like this for them. In the wake of Sept. 11, I pray this special place does not become shallow and predictable and intolerant.

Monday, September 3, 2018

New Insights on Verizon’s 9/11 Recovery Efforts

Photo page, “Verizon Untethered”
“Everyone remembers that sunny Tuesday morning in September…”

That’s the chilling beginning of a 25-page chapter in “Verizon Untethered,” a newly published book about the company’s history. It continues:

Verizon CFO Doreen Toben was on the phone and looking out of her window south from the 39th floor of Verizon’s 1095 Avenue of the Americas, or Sixth Avenue, headquarters. She had a clear view straight south about four miles and clearly saw the first plane fly into the north tower of the World Trade Center at approximately 8:46 a.m. She ran down the hall toward [President Larry] Babbio’s office overlooking Bryant Park to the east to alert him.

Babbio and two lieutenants, Paul Lacouture, president of network services, and John Bell, senior vice president of northeast network services, and other executives gathered in the conference room at the southeastern corner of the floor. They watched in horror as flames and smoke billowed out of the tower. [CEO Ivan] Seidenberg quickly returned from an early morning meeting a few blocks away in Midtown to join them, as did head of corporate communications Mary Beth Bardin.

The second plane pierced the south tower about 17 minutes later. Like much of America, the executives couldn’t quite accept that this was happening. The nation was under attack. Bardin remembers looking from the television in the corner of the room to the actual towers burning to their south. “Somehow seeing it on TV made it more real. We could not believe what we were seeing,” she said.
Photo page, “Verizon Untethered”

They quickly kicked into operations mode. The towers were in the heart of Verizon’s densest telecommunications network, if not the most tightly wired telecommunications node in the world. Four massive computerized switches connected 300,000 Verizon landlines to the outside world. In Lower Manhattan, Verizon also provided nearly 3.6 million data circuits to serve the world’s largest financial center and the thousands of financial services and other businesses, as well as 20,000 residential customers. Most of those copper wires and optical fibers fed into Verizon’s two switching hubs at Broad Street and the 32-story art deco fortress of an operations center completed in 1927 at 140 West Street. It stands adjacent to the complex of World Trade Center buildings that were erected beginning in the 1960s. Ten cellular phone towers were also providing Verizon Wireless service in the area.

Bell turned to Babbio. “You’re an engineer. How long do you think that fire can last?” Earlier than most observers, Babbio understood the structural significance of the flaming structures. “I can tell you this. If it burns for more than an hour and a half, we’re in big trouble here,” Babbio said, “because that steel will melt in an hour and a half.”

And that meant the towers were coming down.

---------

Purchasing link
The chapter goes on to describe Verizon’s behind-the-scenes network recovery efforts following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, culminating in the reopening of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on September 17, 2001.

“Verizon Untethered” was written by Scott McMurray and published by Post Hill Press and The History Factory, under Seidenberg’s direction. All proceeds from book sales are being donated to Verizon’s VtoV Employee Relief Fund for the use of employees and their families in need.

After the book’s publication in May 2018, Verizon contracted with The History Factory to re-establish a company archives to preserve the type of historical information gathered in the research.

This is great news. As a Verizon employee at the time of the attacks (and still today), I have sought to preserve bits and pieces of artifacts in the company’s files about 9/11 and its aftermath. I’ve posted much of this information on a Pinterest site about Verizon's response to 9/11.

Link to my Pinterest site
I would particularly draw your attention to two videos posted there: a remarkable 38-minute documentary, and a 90-second Verizon-backed TV spot called “Lady Liberty” that ran on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

The book includes the interesting backstory about that TV spot, which was mcgarrybowen’s first work as an agency.


Sunday, July 22, 2018

The Corporate Life Chose Me


Thursday evening, July 26, I'll be speaking at a Museum of PR "Summer School" event in New York (details here).

The topic is my work as a spokesperson in the changing world of corporate America (unless things change by then). Registration is free, and the event will also be streamed live on Facebook.

My Twitter Moment, see below, celebrates the hashtag #CorporateLife -- and you might think from this that I sometimes don't take my job very seriously.

On the contrary, I want to let you in on a few secrets.

First, I've worked for Verizon and pre-Verizon companies for more than 30 years. That makes me an odd duck. But I have to tell you, as I've written before, it's never felt like that. I may not have changed companies, but the company has changed several times around me.

Like father, like son. My Dad worked at a Verizon predecessor company, New York Telephone, for 33 years. Dad didn't always love his job (working in Customer Service is particularly demanding) -- but he always loved his family. If he were still with us today, he'd be very proud that I followed in his giant footsteps.

Second, I have no regrets. Verizon is a tech company that helps people communicate. Its goal is to deliver the promise of the digital world to customers, and it aspires to do so in an ethical way. Check out the Verizon Credo. I think that's pretty cool.

Third, I love my particular job -- media relations -- because I get to work directly with the best journalists in the world.

Journalists are under fire these days, and I think unfairly so. Their world -- like mine, and yours too -- is radically changing. But even on their bad days, journalists do more good in the world than most. It's been an honor and a privilege to be able to help them do their jobs.

Want to hear less about me and more what life is like in corporate PR these days? Tune in on Thursday night. I hope it will be informative -- and fun.

Sunday, April 15, 2018

A Book About a Big Company That’s Bigger Than Itself

What did it take to get the U.S. stock market up and running just days after the 9/11 attacks? What was Steve Jobs like as a business partner? How does a company close a $130 billion transaction, or choose a new CEO, or disrupt a successful business to stay successful?

“Verizon Untethered” provides an insider’s insight into these questions.

It’s a readable primer of interest to business students, technology geeks, or anyone curious about the collective impact of individuals who work together with a common purpose.

Many stories in this book are from the point of view of Ivan Seidenberg, the longest-tenured CEO in America before his retirement in 2011. The book also includes insights and stories from several dozen business leaders of Verizon and its predecessor companies, dating from 1983 up to present-day CEO Lowell McAdam. The text is interspersed with rare photos, and commentary from consultant Ram Charan about business "lessons learned" that are more relevant in 2018 than ever.

Scott McMurray is the author, but I suspect much of the book’s readability is due to the efforts of Joellen Brown, who is cited in the acknowledgements as helping to provide historical context, research materials and several reviews for accuracy.

Joellen, my friend and former colleague, recently retired as chief speechwriter for Verizon C-level executives and head of the company's executive communications team. She is a masterful editor. Based on her involvement in this project over the past two years, I asked her recently what she thought were key takeaways from this book.

She noted:

  • The development of the wireless business, almost from birth, and the parallels between wireless's early years and the current challenges in growing Oath, telematics, and other new businesses.
  • The audacity of some of the strategic choices (e.g., Fios, AirTouch, even the aborted TCI deal). Hindsight sometimes turns bold moves into sure things... worth emphasizing that risk-taking has always been part of the strategic DNA of the company.
  • The quest to make networks matter, and the longstanding belief that technological leadership would translate into competitive advantage.
  • The role of culture in the building of a company. Or (maybe this is the same point) the primacy of culture over personality/individual ego.
  • What makes a merger work? The book is full of mergers and acquisitions that work, but also plenty that didn't. What's the difference?

Joellen Brown, center, with Lauren Tilstra and me, 2017.
Finally, she asked about Verizon’s “essential character”: “If you could transport yourself back to 1984, what would you recognize as familiar to the Verizon of 2018?”

With full disclosure, let me try to answer that.

If one takeaway from this book is, “Verizon is not your father’s phone company,” I know that for a literal fact. My father worked 35 years for New York Telephone, NYNEX and then Verizon, and I have worked 33 years for NYNEX, Bell Atlantic and now Verizon. Still, it has never seemed that I have worked for the “same company,” even over the course of my own career, since whatever-the-company-is has changed so radically over that time.

“Verizon Untethered” is the story of that radical change, told from the perspective of people I’ve been honored to know and work beside.

There’s irony in this story too. Verizon has been changed by outside forces that it itself has hastened and enabled. The infrastructure and new technologies deployed by Verizon and its predecessor companies have been the prime catalysts for sweeping changes in the way we all live, work and play.

So to answer Joellen’s question, I would say simply:

Verizon, existentially, has always been a part of something bigger than itself.

The people who work there realize that – they always have, and always will. That connected-ness has added value to the world, added value to customers, and added value to our personal and professional lives.

In that spirit, all proceeds from this book are being donated to the VtoV Fund, which provides emergency assistance to Verizon employees unable to live in their primary homes after a natural disaster. There are no administrative fees; every penny goes to someone in need, and the Verizon Foundation provides a match for every dollar donated.

In the end, “Verizon Untethered” isn’t a history book about a company. If history has taught us anything, it’s that companies come and go. This book tells stories about people, and the things some people do to try to make a positive difference in the world.

---

“Verizon Untethered” (publication date: May 1, 2018) is available for pre-sale now at Amazon and other book distributors.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Happy National Grammar Day!

Martha Brockenbrough
(Photo by Emerald England)
Do you have March 4, 2018, (notice the comma after the appositive year) marked on your calendar as Oscar Night?

Good news: There's another reason to celebrate!

Today marks the 10th anniversary of National Grammar Day, established by writer Martha Brockenbrough (rhymes with "broken toe"), grammar advocate and author of Things That Make Us [Sic].

To mark this anniversary, I think Ms. Brockenbrough should win an Oscar for Best Original Awareness Day. I also think tonight's award should honor the memory of Syd Penner, legendary copy editor for the New York Daily News in the Jimmy Breslin era.

I've previously posted about kind, patient and erudite Mr. Penner, who, after retirement, dressed in suit and tie for a weekly visit to the offices of then-NYNEX at 1095 Ave. of the Americas in New York. He would critique and copyedit the press releases and other writing samples of then-me and my colleagues in the Public Relations department.

I treasured every red mark Syd Penner placed on my work. He pointed out grammatical flaws, wordiness, jargon. He also wasn't a fan of adjectives.

Those pages have long since been recycled. Everything went digital. I've moved offices. And, last year, I moved into an open work environment. Just like a newsroom in the Jimmy Breslin era. Kinda.

The point being, in de-cluttering my life before moving from a physical office, I came across a physical copy of the November 29, 1979, issue of The Printer's Devil (Vol. 1, No. 13). This, as noted by journalist Paul LaRosa, was Syd Penner's occasional, internal-to-the-Daily-News newsletter that celebrated stories he liked and knocked those he didn't.

(Note: Wikipedia offers an informative definition of "printer's devil," complete with a link to a related "Twilight Zone" episode, available on Hulu and starring Burgess Meredith.)

This sample of The Printer's Devil is from the late Mr. Penner's personal files. He had given it to me because I kept hounding him to tell me stories about life as a journalist in the '60s and '70s.

I offer it to you here, in celebration of National Grammar Day:



For more information and ideas on ways to celebrate National Grammar Day (no drinking games included), visit nationalgrammarday.com.