BETHPAGE, N.Y. — BETHPAGE, N.Y. — Theresa Pickard, human resources director for Sleepy's here, was in a meeting, passing on information about the recent death of a colleague, when she got some unsettling news.
It was a page from her sister-in-law. A plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Pickard's husband, Bob Pickard, an insurance consultant for AON, worked on the 93rd floor of the south tower, the second one hit in last week's terrorist attacks. She hadn't heard from him, but felt pretty sure he was OK. It was such a big building, she thought.
Bob Pickard had missed his train from Long Island
that morning. But that didn't stop him. He rushed to another station to catch the next train in. That put him about 10 minutes behind schedule.
"When he got to his building, he saw an airplane sticking out of it," then the fire, Theresa Pickard said. "People were screaming, 'Run north! Run north!' That's what they all did. They were trying to run from the smoke; it was so thick."
Call was cut off
She didn't hear from her husband until some time before 10 a.m., when he called to say he was OK. Then the call was cut off. The south tower — his building — collapsed and she had to worry until about 3 p.m., when he called back.
"It was hell until I got him home," Pickard said.
That 10-minute train delay may have saved Bob Pickard's life. Theresa thanked God for that, but realized other people weren't so lucky. As of Thursday morning, she estimated only about 300 of AON's 1,200 employees working in the World Trade Center were accounted for. The company occupied several floors of the south tower.
Few people contacted in New York last week wanted to talk about the impact the tragedy will have on furniture business. It's bound to be terrible for an industry already suffering a recession, most said, but beyond that, their minds were elsewhere — on families, on victims, on what they might do to help. Those reached said their employees were safe and accounted for.
Sleepy's makes statement
Sleepy's has about 13 of its 230 sleep shops in Manhattan, none close enough to the World Trade Center to suffer damage from the falling debris. The stores closed Tuesday to let people get home as soon as they could. It was trying to open Wednesday, not expecting to do much business in New York, but there was a principle involved.
"As the president said, we're not going to let those people stop us from doing our business," said Harry Acker, Sleepy's chairman. "How much business we'll be doing, I don't know, but we're here."
Adam Levine, co-owner of Basics Furniture at 92 Seventh Ave., kept the doors open the day of the attack but effectively was closed by noon. "We're still bewildered," he said. "It was the heaviest spirit I ever felt in my entire life. There were hundreds of people walking in front of the store and the silence outside was amazing."
Looking for American flags
Adam's father, Harvey Levine, was out Wednesday looking to buy as many American flags as he could to hang from the store's awning, while Adam was working on a plan to donate some portion of sales to rebuilding.
"It's going to take trillions of dollars," he said. "I don't know how the city is going to pay for this one."
Industry real estate expert Julius Feinblum, based in Bethpage, knew of no furniture store directly damaged by last week's blasts, noting that most are located above 14th street. The city closed down public access to lower Manhattan.
"Obviously, business will be disrupted all over New York and all over America for the next couple of days because of the psychological impact," he said. "People don't want to go into malls. They kind of want to lay back a little bit."
Feinblum's employees are fine, but not without some scary moments and thoughts. His wife Linda Feinblum was driving around the WTC towers the day before the attack, scouting possible sites for Sleepy's stores.
And on Tuesday morning, a Feinblum team was taking another client around to sites in Arlington, Va., near the Pentagon, which also was attacked by a hijacked commercial jet. Feinblum's team didn't report in until 5 p.m., he said. "They were shaken up, but OK."
Danker's good deeds
Danker Furniture, with a store in Arlington within walking distance of the Pentagon, served as a refuge for some government employees forced to evacuate and anxious to contact their families. Staffed that day by design consultant Carl Ellis and receptionist Patricia Jones, the store kept its doors open for those in need of a phone, coffee and a restroom.
Rufus Lassiter, a staff action control specialist working in the Pentagon, came into the store with four other Pentagon staffers after failed attempts to reach his wife on a cell phone. He got through on Danker's line, then came back the next day with his wife to thank the employees.
"They just let us in there and let us ease our minds," he said. "I think that was very caring and thoughtful of them."
Danker owner Gerard Kvasnovsky, owner of the four-store, high-end retailer, said the company has a policy of staying open no matter what and was glad the store could hold out until later that afternoon when everyone was forced to leave the area.
As for future business, he said he hopes what he's been reading is right — that people in this country tend to recover quickly from tragedy.
Sleepy's Acker said it is impossible to predict the impact of the terrorist attacks on business, since nothing like it has ever happened in this country. But he doubts it will do anything to pick up an industry that's already down. "Nobody was talking about buying a mattress (after the attacks)," Acker said. Sleepy's telemarketing arm was dead. "It think a lot of people are nervous that something else will happen," he said.
Still, business didn't seem to be at the top of any businessperson's mind last week.
