Larry Weber Remembers 9/11 and the Day Everything Changed

Larry Weber is one of the defining leaders in public relations and communication. The founder of Weber Shandwick, he built the firm into what was then the world's largest public relations agency and has long been ahead of the industry in seeing how technology and digital communication are changing the way we work. By 2001, Larry was also in a major leadership role at Interpublic Group (IPG), overseeing a growing portfolio of businesses beyond advertising, and spending several days each week in New York City.

When I talked with Larry Weber about September 11, one of the first things he remembered was the sky. It was a beautiful, completely clear Tuesday morning in New York, and Larry had finished breakfast and was walking down Madison Avenue toward his office at Interpublic in the Time Life Building. He usually cut through Rockefeller Center and liked to walk past the Today Show on his way to work, just to see what was happening.

As he was walking, he heard a plane that was incredibly loud and seemed so low that people on the street were covering their ears. Larry watched it continue downtown, but no one really knew what they had just seen or heard. People looked around, wondered what was going on and then, because it was New York, continued on their way.

By the time Larry reached the office, the televisions were on and the first reports were saying that a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. He immediately thought about the plane he had just heard, which certainly hadn't sounded small to him. It wasn't long before everyone realized that something terrible was happening.

For Larry, it also became very personal very quickly. His sister-in-law's husband worked in the second tower and had evacuated, but was apparently told things were okay and started back. After the second plane hit, he eventually made it out, covered in ash, and joined the crowds trying to get away from Lower Manhattan. Larry called his wife in Boston to tell her he was safe and asked her to tell their kids he was okay. He tried to figure out a way to get home, but with the airspace shut down and transportation disrupted, there wasn't much he could do except stay in New York and wait.

Eventually he returned to the Four Seasons, where he regularly stayed while working in the city. Much of the staff had been sent home, and the people who remained at the hotel were basically stranded together, watching what was happening and trying to understand what came next. Among them were Pete Townshend, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder and architect Frank Gehry.

It's an amazing group of names, but Larry wasn't telling me a celebrity story. They were simply people who happened to find themselves in the same place on a day when nothing was normal.

What mattered much more was that Larry knew people who had died. Weber Shandwick was working with a number of Boston companies at the time, and he knew people who were on the planes. As he talked about those days, he remembered finally going to sleep with one thought running through his mind: "This changes everything."

That line stayed with me, particularly because of where Larry was in his own life at the time. He was 46 and had built and integrated Weber Shandwick into what was then the world's largest public relations firm. He was writing his first book, thinking about technology and digital communication, raising a young family and looking ahead to what was next. Then September 11 happened in the middle of all of it.

Larry remembers wondering what it would mean for the communication profession and how things would change. Of course, neither he nor any of us could have known what the next 25 years would bring.

Larry also told me a story about Frank Gehry that I loved. A few years after 9/11, he was helping MIT prepare for a press conference about a new building Gehry had designed. Larry's team told him they needed a model or something visual so the architectural press could see what the building was going to look like.

Larry mentioned that he knew Gehry, which naturally prompted the question of how."We were together on 9/11," he told them.

Larry called Gehry, who remembered him, and explained what they needed. Gehry told him there wasn't a model, but he had another idea. He asked Larry to get him a card table, some clean tin cans, aluminum foil, newspaper and a hammer.

At the press conference, with architectural critics from major publications looking on, Gehry started pounding the cans and putting the materials together right there on the table. Before long, he had created a rough version of the building, giving the press exactly the visual they had been looking for.

I loved hearing that part of Larry's story. Two people who happened to be stranded at the Four Seasons on September 11 found themselves together again a few years later, this time under very different circumstances.

I've known Larry for a long time, and we all know what he has meant to our industry, but our conversation wasn't really about his career or everything he has accomplished. It was about where he was that Tuesday morning, calling his family to tell them he was safe, the people he knew who didn't make it home and the memories that remain very clear 25 years later.

Larry still remembers that beautiful New York sky, the sound of the plane flying far too low over Madison Avenue and the people on the street stopping to look before continuing on their way. And he remembers the thought he had when he finally went to sleep that night.

"This changes everything."

Twenty-five years later, we know just how much it did.