Howard Lutnick was supposed to be on the 101st floor of the North Tower that morning. But he took his 6-year-old son to his first day of school, and that decision saved his life.
His brother Gary and his best friend Douglas were not so fortunate. Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 employees on September 11, 2001, the greatest loss of life suffered by any company that day.
Lutnick did not remain in mourning. He promised to allocate 25% of the firm’s profits for five years to the families, cover their health care for a decade, and offer a job to every child of a deceased employee. He fulfilled every promise: he distributed more than 180 million dollars and, by 2016, 57 of those children were already working at the company that had taken their parents from them.
