Laid Off One Day Before 9/11, Monica O’Leary’s Unexpected Escape From the World Trade Center
On September 10, 2001, Monica O’Leary was sitting in her office on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower when she received news she never expected: she was being laid off.
O’Leary worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm whose offices occupied floors 101 through 105 of the North Tower. Her manager gave her a choice — clear out her desk that afternoon or return the following morning to collect her belongings.
She chose to leave immediately.
After saying her goodbyes, O’Leary walked out of the World Trade Center and returned home, believing that she had just lost her job and source of livelihood.
Less than 24 hours later, everything changed.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower, striking the building below the floors occupied by Cantor Fitzgerald.
Of the approximately 960 Cantor Fitzgerald employees based in New York, 658 were killed in the attacks. Every employee who was in the company’s offices at the time the aircraft struck the building was lost.
O’Leary was not among them.
The dismissal she had considered devastating the previous day had unexpectedly kept her away from the building when the attack occurred.
Her story also has an extraordinary twist. With many members of Cantor Fitzgerald’s human resources staff among those killed, reports indicated that O’Leary’s termination paperwork was never fully processed. In the company’s records, she had reportedly never formally been terminated.
For O’Leary, September 10 began as a day of disappointment and uncertainty. By the following morning, that decision had become the reason she was alive.
Her experience has since been shared through interviews and oral histories, becoming one of the many extraordinary stories of survival surrounding the September 11 attacks.
Sometimes, a moment that feels like the worst news imaginable can become the moment that changes everything.
Laid Off One Day Before 9/11, Monica O’Leary’s Unexpected Escape From the World Trade Center