The worst of times brings out the resilience in people. Sept. 11, 2001, certainly validated that axiom for Jeff Collins, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas.
Collins was sitting in his hotel room on the 18th floor of the World Trade Center Marriott on that day. He was in New York City to attend the annual National Association of Business Economics (NABE) conference.
"My room was just a few rooms away from the first tower. I felt the impact, and I saw the glass and debris falling outside my room," he said. "I truly thought it was an accident."
"Since I had been in New York I could see that the World Trade Center was on a flight path. It is odd. This made me think about how in the 1940s an airplane hit the Empire State Building. So my first thoughts were, This is an accident. I wasn't frightened."
Actually, the 1940s event was lost amid the hoopla surrounding the celebrations of the end of World War II. On July 28, 1945, an army plane crashed into the Empire State Building. A B-25 bomber, lost in fog, rammed into what was then the world's tallest building. Fewer, still, remember the miraculous survival of the woman who fell 75 stories when the cables to her elevator were severed. She had been badly burned in the crash as well, but still survived.
Collins has attended the annual NABE for a number of years. The interaction between economists in the private sector and in the public sector is critical to his job as director of the economic research center at a major state university.
"Another reason that I was at this conference was to work on the close partnership that NABE had formed with the Association for University Business and Economic Research (AUBER), an organization of business and economic research organizations in public and private universities. We are concerned about the same issues and share a vital interest in ensuring that high quality statistics issued by the government and the private sectors," he said.
Collins oversees applied economic research as part of the Walton College's outreach mission. Recent studies have been conducted for Mercury Energy Inc., Beverly Enterprises Inc. and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In addition, he is presently working with the Arkansas cities of Harrison and Lowell, and in conjunction with the University of Arkansas Community Design Center in the cities of El Dorado, Highfill, Bentonville, and in Sebastian County. Collins earned a PhD in economics in 1996 from the University of Tennessee.
Collins also was on a recruiting mission in New York. Each year the UA Center for Business and Economic Research holds a "Business Forecast" luncheon. The event features nationally recognized economists discussing the forecast for the upcoming year. Collins, and Walton College alumna Mary Ann Greenwood, president and chief investment advisor of M.A. Greenwood & Associates Inc., were at the conference to find the right economists to serve on the 2002 panel. Greenwood had brought two interns from the Walton College along with her. For the February, 2002, event, Collins and Greenwood recruited Harvey Rosenblum, the president of NABE and senior vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Jesper Koll, chief economist for Merrill Lynch & Co. in Tokyo, Japan.
Collins continued his story: "I turned on CNN, and it was there that I watched the second plane hit the other tower. Then I realized the danger. Someone was speaking over the hotel intercom, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. I grabbed my suitcases and ran as fast as I could down 18 flights of stairs."
When Collins got to the lobby, he found a large group of people waiting for instructions. A fireman arrived and led them out the door, directing them toward Battery Park.
"I found a cab and asked the driver to take me to the Newark Airport, but found out that all flights were canceled. He took me to a Puerto Rican restaurant where I had breakfast. Funny, the pancakes tasted delicious, even at a time like that," he smiled. "My only thoughts were of getting home to my wife and my children. I soon became a man on a mission. I wanted to get away from New York as fast as possible." Collins' wife, Amy Farmer, is an associate professor of economics in the Walton College. They have two children, ages three and five.
Right from the start of the crisis, Collins found people who were going out of their way to be helpful. His faith in humanity was renewed over and over again. A policeman directed him to the ferry to Hoboken, New Jersey. There he met a man who put him up for the night. Meanwhile, back in Arkansas, his secretary, Angela Peacock, had found him a rental car for "just" $100 a day.
"I understand some people were paying over $1,000 a day so I was grateful. The man I stayed with took me to the rental car place at 7:00 a.m. the next morning. I was first in line," Collins said. "All I could think about was getting home. I drove straight through, stopping once to sleep for an hour on the side of the road in Illinois."
"All of my friends that I know through the NABE and the AUBER have shared stories with me about how people went to extraordinary efforts to help get them out of New York and on the road home," Collins added. "Their stories just confirmed my theory that the worst situations bring out the best in people."
Collins arrived in Fayetteville, Ark., around 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning, a tired, but grateful man. His describes the affect of his experiences:
"Looking back over the past months, I would say that experience hasn't really changed my life, but it is has changed how I do things. Unless something is worth doing, I don't do it. It is really not important. I do feel more fragile now. Personally, I can't look at my kids without feeling very, very blessed because of them.
"From an economics perspective, I think the economy would have been in a downturn, even if September 11 hadn't happened. But as I said in a recent column in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 'The one overriding characteristic of the U.S. economy is resilience.' I certainly found out how resilient I can be.
"Maybe it is 'our never say die' attitude, maybe it is our willingness to spend even when spending seems unbelievably foolish. The American people bounce back from crisis like no other place on the globe. Whatever the cause, Americans simply don't seem to have the patience for a prolonged downturn."
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