The man who had everything

Edward Cone
News & Record
6-2-02

The first good news I got on 9/11 came late in the day. Howie was alive. I knew by then that two of my good friends, Doug Gardner and Calvin Gooding, had been at work that morning on the top floors of the World Trade Center's north tower. Like everyone else in the headquarters of the Cantor Fitzgerald bond-trading firm, they were dead.

But Howard Lutnick, Cantor's chairman and chief executive, was alive. He had taken his son to kindergarten and was running behind his usual schedule. Being a good dad saved his life on a morning when 658 of his employees died, including his brother, Gary, and his close friends Calvin and Doug.

Calvin and Doug and Howard and I went to Haverford College together in the early '80s. He was just Howie then, not a demi-billionaire or the poster-boy for a global tragedy. What has happened to him since is a story of outsized success and unthinkable loss, a Greek tragedy for our times.

You've probably seen Howard on TV, weeping over his loss, pledging that his company would take care of the families of those who died. And you may have heard the backlash, the accusations that he wasn't living up to his promises. What you may not have learned since the publicity died down is that he is doing exactly what he said he would. Cantor Fitzgerald is devoting a sizable chunk of its profits to the families of the dead, and will continue to do so for years.

Now Cantor is getting criticism for running ads that discuss 9/11. Some call it exploiting tragedy. But Cantor can't tell people it's thriving without mentioning its loss - and it needs to get the word out so it can honor its pledge to the families. I'm biased in opposing directions: for Howard, but also for not cheapening the memory of our dead friends. I think these ads stay on the right side of the line.

Howard hired friends who could perform. Calvin and Doug seemed marked for success way back when we were roommates, and they proved themselves over the last 20 years. Doug became a vice-chairman, Calvin a partner. I knew that morning, as I watched events unfold in real time on TV, that there was no way they were coming out alive. Had anyone been able to get off those floors, these guys - both of them athletes, leaders and gentlemen - would have been the last ones out.

Beyond their talents, Doug and Calvin were valuable to Howard because they had known him when he was a college kid whose parents had died, when his dreams were still just dreams. A downside of enormous wealth and power is that those things tilt the perceptions of everyone you encounter. Nobody Howard has met in years could possibly see him in the same light as those friends.

Even Howard's good deeds have unintended consequences. Classmates at Haverford are sometimes uncomfortable with the scale of his generosity. It's hard to complain about the results when he says he'll match the class gift, but it makes people feel insignificant. I got a little taste of that in New York in April, when Howard announced a surprise at a Haverford event: He was naming the new athletic center after Doug, and naming the basketball floor for Calvin. It was a beautiful gesture, but how could their other friends do anything meaningful beside it?

And Howard has his share of enemies. You don't run a Wall Street company in your early 30s without having sharp elbows, and Howard's struggle for control of Cantor earned him notoriety. There is no doubt that he can be a little overwhelming. One friend explains him this way: He's not self-absorbed because he is a billionaire, he's a billionaire because he is self-absorbed. But the antagonism toward him can be almost pathological. A former colleague of mine at Forbes, who wrote a scathing article about Cantor a few years ago, appeared on "20/20" this fall to question Howard's integrity. Before he went on the air he called me to ask if I thought Howard was faking his tears.

This about a man fresh from his brother's funeral, who stood up to eulogize his best friend, Doug, just five days after the attack. I shared the lectern with him in front of 1,100 mourners at Calvin's funeral, and I felt the genuine emotion in his words. People don't read about the time he spends with Doug's 5-year-old son, and the comfort he and his family provide for Calvin's widow. It seems absurd to have to defend the notion that this man who had lost his partners and his staff and the fairy-tale life he had willed into being is sincere in his grief.

When I saw Howard in April, I asked if things were getting back to normal. "Things will never be normal again," he said. In some ways he is right, but in the long run he is wrong. There will be a new normal, one that includes the memories of the dead and the challenge of carrying on for the living. That is true for him in a very particular way, but it is true for the rest of us as well.

Edward Cone (efcone@mindspring.com), a magazine journalist and Greensboro native, contributes a column to the News & Record each Sunday.