Transcript for complete interview. - Voices of September 11th

Interview with John Duffy, chairman & CEO of KBW
Conducted by Mary Fetchet
[John]: Well I think I got a fairly unique perspective from having been an employee of a firm
that was directly hit and being a survivor who’s lost a family member. There aren’t many in that
category. But I don’t think that I have any doubt that the firm would have behaved in the same
way whether I was here or not. I believe in the culture of the firm, hopefully I help set the tone
but whether you’re talking about Andy Simchak or Peter Wirth or Tom Michno or Dean Rybeck
or Jackie Day I think they would have gotten to the same place. You kind of do what’s right and I
think all of us think enough alike that what was right or appropriate was obvious to all of us so
hopefully we behaved in a way that people think is laudatory and whether I was here or not
and whether I survived or not, we would have done the same things.
[Mary]: You focus so much on commemoration, when I think about your book, you said you
focus on the good that came out of 9/11: the memorials and foundations that were established.
[John]: Yeah I think we feel it’s very important that the nation not forget. The families are never
going to forget. We’re not doing this because we think any of the families are going to forget
what happened on 9/11, but we think it’s critically important and appropriate to do what we’ve
done. Certainly the services are directed to the families on a personal level but the book that
was written, that I co-wrote with a woman, Mary Schaeffer, an interesting story behind that, I
probably received close to a dozen phone calls in the first couple of months from people that
wanted to do a movie to people that wanted to write a book. But we had so much to do that I
couldn’t envision laying that on top of what we had to do, that that was – there weren’t going
to be enough hours in the day on my schedule or anyone else’s schedule. So whenever anyone
of these movie guys or book guys called me up I just said, Appreciate the interest, the thought,
but no. Then ultimately I got a call from a woman that I had known professionally, Mary
Schaeffer. I took her phone call and I listened to her a little bit more because I had known her
for a period of time. She said, This story really needs to be told. I listened more to her, more to
her just out of courtesy. I was firmly convinced this was not something we could afford to do.
But by the end of the conversation with her, she convinced me she could get a book contract
and that we could make some money off this, and came up with the idea that we take the
proceeds and donate it to the family fund. That was really the first kind of thought that had
resonated with me from talking with any of these folks. At this point, at least a couple of
months had gone by, so things were starting to get back to normal. We probably had some
space, I don’t know if we had moved into it yet, but I was probably thinking a little bit more
clearly because some of the day to day calamity was starting to come back to a little bit more
normal sense of activity. At least we had a sense that we were going to be able to rebuild the
place. So when I finished with Mary I said to her, Listen, I’m not going to make a decision. Some
of the people you’d want to talk to if we were going to do a book, I need to find out how smart
a move they think it is. So one afternoon I gathered about six or seven of them in a room, and
they were really people who had been in the building and had escaped. Unfortunately we didn’t
have many of those, but the few that we had I figured would probably have the most vivid
stories that Mary would want to include in the book. So I gathered them and I said, Listen, I
don’t want to be intrusive. This isn’t something that we have to do, but I explained to them the
conversation that I’d had with Mary and I said, Mary’s pretty convinced we can get a contract
and get the thing published and we talked around the table. Some people said that they’d
participate, some of them were a little reluctant about whether they really wanted to tell their