Two authors, in two 9/11 books, search for meaning in the twin towers

What are the odds that the same man, on Sept. 11, would narrowly miss being in the south tower of the World Trade Center and Flight 93 − the plane that went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania?

And what are the odds the man, writing about the life lessons of 9/11, would have grown up next door to a woman who was also writing about the life lessons of 9/11?

Fate? Destiny? Karma?

Such words come naturally, in the context of an existential crisis like 9/11.

What does it all mean? Why do some people live and others die? How do we face death − and how do we make the most of life?

Those are questions that Barbara Becker, author of "Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind" (Flatiron Books/Macmillan) and Ed Zier, author of "Undaunted: Leadership Amid Growth & Adversity" (Koehler Books), believe we should be thinking about − good times or bad.

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"Both of our books are about what we did in this experience of 9/11," said Becker, now a Manhattan resident, who grew up next door to Zier in Franklin Lakes.

The two had been good friends since the 1970s. In fact, she met her husband David through Zier's family. Neither had any idea − until after the fact − each was writing a book about a similar subject.

Coincidence? Maybe.

"There's something more to life than meets the eye," said Zier, who now lives in Naples, Florida.

Both books − part memoir and part meditation − are about the ways 9/11 impacted the authors, and changed the trajectory of their lives. The repercussions, in both cases, were enormous.

Ministers and volunteers

Becker became an interfaith minister and a disaster chaplain who ministers to people in extreme situations. She is also a hospice volunteer who has worked extensively with families of the dying. She has been, she estimates, at the deathbeds of close to 1,000 people.

Zier, who began gamely building back his company on Sept. 12, 2001 − the day after 166 of his colleagues barely made it out of the doomed south tower and four lost their lives − eventually walked away from the corporate world and began a private consulting practice. Less money, but he discovered that perhaps money wasn't so important after all. He also began volunteering to teach English to ESL students.

"I could see my daughter in plays if I had to," he said. "I could go on field trips with her. That wouldn't have been possible in the corporate world. I do credit 9/11 for giving me that point of view."

Both authors, like many of us, have vivid memories of that day in 2001.

Becker, a Lower East Side resident in New York City, was taking her 1-year-old son Evan to day care in a stroller at 8:46 a.m., when the first plane hit the North Tower. They were three blocks away.

"We were close enough to see people jumping," she said.

In that first moment of confusion, some people were actually underreacting: accident, small plane, don't panic. But Becker was then working for the Center for Reproductive Rights on Wall Street. She knew about terrorism. And she knew that abortion clinic bombings often happen in twos. "They'll place a bomb, it goes off, then they wait until the first responders are in sight to launch a second attack." She didn't wait to see what would happen next. "I turned the stroller around and ran back to my neighborhood," she said.

She remembers vividly her son pointing at the sky and saying, "Fire!" "He would end up repeating that over and over, for the next three months," she said.

Dodging a bullet

At precisely the same moment, Zier's colleagues were on floors 77 and 78 of the south tower. Their software company, Baseline Financial Services, founded in 1981, had just moved into the towers two years before. Under ordinary circumstances, Zier would have been there too.

But it happened that a meeting he was expected to attend on the West Coast had been suddenly rescheduled for Sept. 12. He now had to get to San Francisco by Sept. 11. The usual $500 ticket would, because of the last-minute booking, cost him $2,000. Too pricey, he felt. So he declined.

Thus he may have narrowly missed being booked on United 93 − one of three flights leaving Newark for San Francisco that morning. Odds were one in three he would have been booked on it. "It was an instant, 'Oh my goodness!' when I heard," he said.

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But he barely had time to process his own close call.

"I was already overwhelmed at 3 p.m.," he said. "I didn't know who was alive then. Phone service was so poor. I had to find a way to tell thousands of customers we potentially didn't exist anymore. I had to start figuring out what funerals I would be attending. Obviously, it was the most surreal moment of my life, and it changed me greatly. I had already been through hugging my wife, going to school to tell my daughters I was alive. My parents came to my house to hug me as tight as anyone ever hugged me in my life."

The search for answers

That day was a turning point for Zier − as it was for Becker.

For her, 9/11 was the beginning of a spiritual quest.

She had barely begun to process that trauma when, in 2010, her close friend, Marisa Palladino, died of cancer. "I loved this woman so much," she said. "When I was told she had a year left to live, I went into an existential crisis. I began reading everything I could about death. I discovered thinkers and sages from Thoreau to Marcus Aurelius to the Dalai Lama all implored us to live with the end ever-present in our lives."

She studied with Zen monks. She attended ceremonies with Lakota elders in South Dakota. She talked with a young girl whose father and three brothers were killed before her eyes during the Rwandan genocide. She dealt with the death of her own parents. In 2017, she became a minister. Her book is an account of her journey − and the lessons she learned from it.

"I decided to take on death as a teacher, rather than run away from this conversation we're afraid to have in this culture, about ourselves, our own deaths, and the deaths of loved ones," she said.

Her key takeaway: confronting death honestly, and having it present in our lives, makes us stronger people. That's the meaning of her title: "Heartwood."

"Heartwood is the inner pillar of trees," she said. "It is prized by woodworkers, for being the strongest, most stable part of the tree. But what's surprising is that heartwood is no longer living. It's inert. Trees grow around it, they need the strength of the heartwood to expand. With those we've loved and lost, they're a lot like the trees. They form our heartwood − our enduring strength."

All for one

For his part, Zier was learning another valuable lesson from 9/11. About solidarity. Teamwork.

"The people that survived that day were incredibly undaunted and unwavering in getting out of the building," he said.

The second plane hit the south tower at 9:03 a.m. The crash destroyed floors 84 down to 78 − which is to say, the topmost of the two floors where Baseline Financial Services was located. "The four blessed souls on 78 were killed instantly," Zier said.

Luckily by that time, most of the folks on floor 77 were already on their way downstairs.

They had disobeyed instructions − they'd been told to sit tight; it would be more dangerous to go down to a street crowded with first responders. But even before the second plane hit, the staff had reached their own conclusions. "We had a young man from Northern Ireland who was used to bomb threats," Zier said. "He said to his colleagues, 'I've had experience with this, I'm getting out of here.' "

And so they all did. And so − incredibly − did the 12 people who were still left on the 77th floor after the second plane hit.

"They banded together somehow; it was one for all and all for one," Zier said. "They examined the staircases − they all looked bad, so they rolled the dice and chose the one that was the least smoky. And all of our individuals rallied around a colleague who was pregnant. They moved at her pace. Which is absolutely amazing."

Smelling the flowers

Credit the much-maligned corporate culture of America − which has its upside in an emergency. "I tie the corporate culture that was very family and team-oriented with their determining to go together," Zier said.

It was that same team spirit that caused a skeleton crew of 15 staffers to meet in a Philadelphia satellite office the next day − a day when America was still in shock − and determine that, come hell or high water, Baseline would be ready when the stock market opened the following Monday. They were.

"We rebuilt the business," he said. "It grew 22% by the end of 2001."

But − paradoxically − with this demonstration of the strength of corporate culture, also came a conviction that life was about more than shareholder meetings.

"I changed because of the events of 9/11," he said. "I stopped being − not instantly − a type-A personality. My view, and Barbara's view, is that there is more to life than pushing a pencil across a spreadsheet.

"It's really about people − ourselves, our friends, and our families."