HE: How has your lifestyle changed since 9/11?
Lutnick: I lost many of my friends and colleagues because the company had a policy where we wanted  to work with people that we [knew], so I hired my brother and my best friend. The security guard even hired his brother-in-law, so we all hired people that we thought were important to each other. My brother, Gary, died at 36 and my best friend, Brett Gardner, at 39. I had just turned 40 at the time, and I had a birthday party with 50 couples, 38 of whom died. We had all of the top floor of the World Trade Center; we had the most spectacular offices. It was the building that the first plane hit, the one with the antenna on the top, so none of our employees were able to get out and there was no chance for any of our employees to survive. But now we have 1500 people in New York, so we’re bigger…plus, we took care of all our families. It was the most difficult thing personally because we all lost our great friends, and that’s why we had to rebuild the company—to take care of the family and our best friends that we all lost, which changed our lives forever.

HE: How have you coped?
Lutnick: The most important thing for me was to try to help my friends’ families, the families of those that we lost, because I felt the best way to show somebody that died you loved them was to take care of the people that they loved. So I set a goal with all the surviving employees of the company that we would rebuild the company with one purpose—to help the families who lost those in our company. It was a purpose much larger than making money. It was taking care of our friends’ families. The reason our company could survive is because we weren’t just working; we were trying to take care of our friends, and that was more important, and that’s why everyone was able to work as hard as they could for as long as they did.

HE: What advice would you give to other victims?
Lutnick: I don’t know if I can give advice because I would never want this to happen to others, but what carried us forward was that we wanted to take care of our friends’ families. That was the most important thing to us. It was the reason we reopened our business, and we were able to survive. Also, we gave 25 percent of our profits for five years to the families of those we lost and paid for their health care for 10 years because health care was so expensive. We didn’t want all the people with little kids to have to worry about paying medical bills. It cost 180 million dollars, [and] a super-human effort by our employees.

HE: Can you describe your experience while attending the tenth anniversary memorial?
Lutnick: Every year on the anniversary of September 11, we hold a memorial with over 100 of our families in Central Park. We did it again this year, and it was very large. We had probably three times the people. In the afternoon, usually about 1000 people come; this time we had about 3000 families and relatives.  This was the first year we went downtown to the national September 11 Memorial in the morning.  I am on the board, so I had seen it in drawings, but I had never seen it in person. It was really quite beautiful and appropriate.

HE: In what other ways has the company responded?
Lutnick: Every Sept. 12, we hold a charity day where our company around the world donates our revenues to charity, so that all our clients know if they do any business with us, we’ll give the money to charity. All our employees waive their pay for the day, and we have celebrities come. For example, this year Eli Manning, quarterback for the Giants, and Mark Sanchez, quarterback for the Jets came to the event. Also in attendance were Sarah Hughes, Olympic gold medalist, all the Rangers players and Ben Stiller.  Two more famous people, President George Bush and President Clinton, came in the afternoon.  On that day, we were able to raise 12 million dollars for charity in one [event]. We gave that money to over 100 charities across the world.