Operation Find Don
I realized after a couple archive searches that this never made it over from the old site. Not sure how much good it will do now — my feeling at this point is that, if Don hasn’t been found yet, there may be no finding the guy — but I’m happy to be proven wrong. Although…it could be kind of awkward. (“So, you waited for eight years for me to show up.” “Uh huh.” “And so did some of your readers.” “Ehhhh-yep.” “That’s…quite odd.” “Yessir it is. Beer?” “Um.”) But the hell with it. Life is short, but not so short I can’t make time to thank a guy.
This year I’ve given myself a bit more time to find him, so do me a favor: pass it on. FB it, tweet it, whatever you got. It’s two presidential terms gone by now; we gotta find this dude.
OPERATION FIND DON
The latest news is that there is no news; if I hear anything, I will let you know, but I haven’t heard anything…and it’s starting to look like I won’t. I don’t think I would recognize Don if I saw him on the street, anymore; I doubt he would remember me, especially now that my hair is so different.
It’s also possible that Don does not in fact want to be found, or that he’s in the Yukon or something, but I’ve done the paid name/birthday searches and I’ve hoped that six degrees of separation would loop around, and I still haven’t turned him up.
Thanks again to everyone who’s mentioned it on sites they run or frequent, or to friends of theirs in the media, and to everyone who’s sent words of support. I appreciate it. If you hear anything, or you want to mention it on your blog, please feel free — you never know.
Don: A (Very Very) Brief History
Don is a man I met on September 11, 2001. Don and I became “disaster buddies,” and ever since, I’ve wanted to thank him for hanging out with me and helping me keep it together — but I haven’t seen or heard from him since we parted ways late that morning.
What Don Looks/Looked Like
Don is an African-American man. I would estimate his age at between 25 and 35 on that day — probably not younger than that; possibly older, but not much. That means he’s 30-ish to 40 now.
Don is between 5’9″ and 6′ tall, and probably weighed 160-180 pounds. (I suck at estimating men’s weights.) In any case, at that time Don had a fit build — not pudgy, not skinny, well put-together.
Don had short hair and a goatee at that time. I do not recall any jewelry; he may have worn a watch, I don’t remember. No glasses.
Don had on a grey windowpane-plaid suit and was carrying a black soft-sided briefcase.
Don didn’t really resemble anyone famous, except Blair Underwood around the eyes a little bit.
Other Possibly Relevant Facts
Don and I met in the lobby of the Bank of New York building, located roughly at Wall Street and Broadway. We left the bank together at approximately 11 that morning.
Don lived at that time in Jersey City, or thereabouts — he took the ferry to Jersey City to get home, from a slip somewhere around Hester Street on the west side.
Don had come into the city that morning via the PATH train, and had gotten off at the World Trade Center stop. He had come into the city for work, but I don’t remember whether his business that day was actually at the WTC complex; I don’t believe it was. If he had gotten separated from any work colleagues, he didn’t mention it. I don’t know what he did for a living, and I don’t know if his job was based in Jersey City or in lower Manhattan, but I got the impression that he was in the city for an errand or meeting, and that he didn’t regularly commute in.
As I said, I don’t recall a wedding ring; Don did not mention a wife or any other family at that time as far as I can remember.
Don’s birthday is September 11. No idea what year, but based on my estimate of his age it’s probably in the late sixties or seventies.
Why You Should Care
Because it’s a mystery, a puzzle, a story that needs an end. Because Don is everything good and friendly about the world. Because I owe him my thanks, and possibly a cold beer. Because it’s his birthday.
What You Can Do
Do you know anyone in Jersey City, or anyone who lives or works near there? Have you heard a story like mine — secondhand, thirdhand, on someone’s journal? Do you recall reading or hearing anywhere about people who ran for the Bank of New York, walked uptown a bit, and took a ferry to New Jersey? Post in the comments, or email me at sars at tomatonation dot com.
And if you are in fact Don? Well, don’t just sit there. Show yourself. My mom’s friend swears you were an angel and she’ll keep believing that shit until I can prove otherwise.
Suggestions? Clues? Conspiracy theories? Send ’em my way. I’ll add any new information as it comes in.
In short: Don. He’s still out there. And he’s another year older.
Tags: friends
I tossed it on my facebook. I used to live there during that time, and as an entertainer i have a good amount of people viewing my facebook and website. Goodluck to you, it is worth it.
I emailed Whitney Matheson at USAToday (Popcandy) in the faint hopes she might pub the Don search. Cross your fingers.
@Nicki: Well, I wouldn’t feel warm and fuzzy about it, obvi, but if he was trying to pull a scam, what he ended up actually doing was calming me down somewhat and making me feel like I wasn’t by myself.
I have heard variations on this theme before — that Don’s intentions were not kind ones, or that in his regular life maybe he’s a dillweed — and it’s certainly possible, but my not wanting to think that of him aside, I just…don’t see it. I mean, the dillweed part, who can say. I knew the guy for 45 minutes, maybe he’s an ass when buildings aren’t falling down. But the theory that he was trying to scam me doesn’t hold a ton of water, unless it’s the world’s slowest-developing long con.
Sure, he could have lied about everything, but in that case, I’ll likely never find him, so…no foul, I guess. My goal at this point is to put the mystery to bed; if I can’t do that this time around, I’m declaring him an angel and closing the file.
Thanks to everyone who’s sharing the entry! I wrote to Oprah yesterday; Her Majesty’s Secret Service HAS to be able to find this dude, no?
OOOh!!! Oprah was an excellent idea.
We’re gonna find him, Sarah, and you guys are going to have that beer.
On my Facebook page.
Nicki, that would be the absolute stupidest con game on the planet. All Don did was help Sars get through that day. No contact since. Certainly no attempts to take money from her, or sleep with her, or whatever it is you think nefarious black men to do “females”.
Ugh.
Sars, I’ll do my best to spread the word on FB about Don… who knows, maybe by now he’s migrated out here to the West Coast.
I don’t think even the most hardened con artist can pull that shit in the moment on a day like that was. Human beings have a physical, chemical brain-reaction to that kind of thing and you can’t circumvent it by just being oily enough.
I live in Australia so am of no help at all. But I’ve had everything crossed for years that Don will turn up, so positive energy, bro.
So, since I’ve never been to the East coast (well, never even east of New Orleans, actually) can someone help me by letting me know what part of New Jersey, Jersey City is located in? I’m just curious now, and I’m horrible at geography.
Sars –
Can I suggest you wait until 2011 until you call it quits? I don’t want you to stop searching until you find him (I think this is a great story) but I understand how you feel. 10 years is a much more “round” number than 8 is… I think you should hold out for 10 years (if needed).
That’s my two cents.
I put Tomato Nation in my #followfriday list on Twitter and I tweeted Neil Gaiman and asked him to retweet…who knows with him since he has a million followers and probably gets thousands of requests. But I figured it couldn’t hurt.
Facebook’d for ya, Sars. I’d like to see the mystery end happily, too. :)
I’m glad Don was fit. Otherwise, writing that part of his physical description would have been a challenge: “Don was vertically challenged.” “Don enjoyed food.” “Don was fat.” “Pudgy” really only works in the context of eliminating…
I really hope you find him, Sars.
I will be in a New York airport for exactly 32 minutes on September 4, and will keep an eye out. I have no blog ( I just horn in on others’ comment sections :) ) but anything I can do…
I too read the piece every year, and wonder.
wendy, in nicki’s defense, you injected a racist element (“nefarious black men”) that I don’t think was present in her original comment. I agree, however, that it seems highly unlikely that he was anything more than he appeared to be – a fellow traveller on a horrible day.
It’s hard to believe that, with our internet-enabled interconnectedness, you haven’t been able to find him. It’s a fantasy of mine that I’ll be sitting on a plane or something some day, and discover he’s sitting next to me, and I’ll tell him about TN, and the mystery will be solved! Yay! And Sars will send me a pen :-)
Keep looking – I love this story.
On my facebook too…
Dear Sars:
Hard to believe it’s been 8 years. I was only a month into TN on 9/11 and remember reading your description of the day and crying.
I don’t know if you will ever find him, but do know that he was a gift, and am glad he showed up for you. I’ll join the FB group and pass the word. Who knows??
A friend’s father is an editor at a New Jersey paper. I’ve asked her to find out if this could be a good human-interest story for them.
Maybe part of Don not being found is that he just…doesn’t go online much, and involving print media may be the way to go.
Nicki: It’s true that, like Sars said, Don could be a schlong in real life, and not just because of what you’re postulating. There’s a whole range of human behaviour that probably wouldn’t land most of us in the upstanding-citizen side of the line – from spousal abuse to not paying parking tickets.
But I’m not sure that it matters. I have a few friends that might be schlongs, but they’re my schlongs, and we’ve got a history and some special moments together. Our stories still matter even if it features a couple of schlongs.
And from what I was told by a friend, the next-to-last-thing most people involved were probably thinking was “Hey, maybe I can use this baffling crisis to get laid.”
PS: In retrospect, “spousal abuse” was the wrong parameter to use, because that IS an excellent reason to purge someone from your memory banks. My apologies, I should have thought before posting.
If Oprah can’t find him, no one can, for reals.
I tossed this on my Facebook. I always get a little weepy when you post about Don.
Imagine, Sarah, if he’s spent 8 years wondering where you are and only knows you as Sarah! You must be much harder to find.
Still hoping, after all these years, like everyone else, that he’ll be found.
@Kat: Seriously. “Her name is Sarah. She’s…white?” “Ohhhh, HER.” Hee.
If one of us were named Percival or Teresita, this would be over already, but what can you do. Hope is not dead.
Sidebar: “Percival and Teresita” should be the next big book/HBO/movie franchise of either a) plucky orphans or b) gay vampire erotica.
@Bria: I vote for gay vampire erotica. Totally possible on HBO.
Sarah, this is why you need to wear your tomato costume everywhere. No one forgets a woman in a tomato costume.
Got an ancillary tip off Craigslist this morning; the info’s being forwarded to a contact at the 9/11 Tribute Center.
Yay! Oh, how amazing would it be to solve this mystery!
I’ve joined the Operation Find Don group on Facebook, and posted about it on my own FB. I doubt I’ll turn anything up (my contacts tend to be friends and family, and we’re all up in Canada, so…) but hey – if I don’t try, I’ll never know.
That said, if Don turns out to have been lurking in St. Catharines all this time, I am going to be *very* surprised.
I’m on the side of believing that Don, *when* he is found, will not turn out to be a total dillhole in “real” life. I don’t want to sound like Miss Naive McTrusterson or anything, but I do think that largely, people are generally good. Also, if he does turn out to be not the best specimen of humanity, it just would go to show that we can find good in all people, even douchebags, who have the ability to come through for other people in extraordinary times. But, to reiterate, I don’t believe that will be the case with Don.
“I have a few friends that might be schlongs, but they’re my schlongs” needs to go on one of those TN t-shirts.
I just can’t accept that Don would be a butthole that walks like a man–a situation like 9/11 usually strips away the veneer of niceness on jerks. It doesn’t ennoble them.
My theory is that either he really WAS an angel, or he might have been so shaken to the core by the events of that day that he moved to Wyoming and became a wrangler on a dude ranch or something. Not much wifi on most dude ranches. Like I’d know.
My sole suggestion, if someone hasn’t already suggested it, is the Tom Joyner morning show: not as large an audience as Oprah, obviously, but should still spread the word to a significant number of African-Americans. Maybe try to get on the show’s schedule for the week of 9/11?
Holy baby 7.5-lb Jesus. Has it been that long since 9/11?
i live in JC, so i’ve put a call out for don. no don’s shown up thus far, but i’m still working on it.
BTW, it was nice to meet you @ glark’s. your intense intensity was slightly less intense than i’d have expected, though still VERY intense.
Nice to meet you too!
A producer at BBC’s “Americana” just called me, having seen a mention of OFD on Metafilter. Good word-spreading, guys! I’m not sure what will become of the story, but I’ll keep you posted.
I secretly hope that it turns out he has a website called “Hunting for Bunting,” even though that makes no sense because if he knew your last name, he probably wouldn’t need to create a website to try to find you.
So incredibly bizarre — I was JUST thinking about OFD this morning.
Posted to FB. I would be so happy if you found him.
I never imagined that people would comment on my question. I was not just hypothesizing a sleezeball – but a particular behavior, taught in a class. Please see
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/22/AR2008012202542.html
It is written Gene Weingarten, about taking a class in the Mystery Method. It was taught by a man who would not give his real name, but wished to be called “the Don.”
No, i don’t think that alone makes him your Don. Weingarten gave us more information about this person, the mystery method, over other several chats. Things like
-always wear suit and carry briefcase
-always say that today is your birthday
-always say that you are leaving town today/tonight.
As I said, I don’t know that this Don is your Don, although the physical description by Weingarten, as far as it goes, matches. Neither of you knew when you met each other that 9/11 was going to be a very different, abnormal day, where emotions and everything else were magnified, and small details would be remembered.
I find it very easy to imagine that he was following the script, but after the ever growing tragedy of the day, did not want to admit that much of what he said was a lie, a script.
You can find more about the Don by searching in Weingarten’s other chats.
Sometime after I first read about the Mystery Method, they changed the name to Love Systems. For a while, there were images of its founders on the web; most of those have been taken down. I can no longer find the image of the guy who looked to me like your Don.
Honestly, I hope that this is NOT your Don, but the similarities kept eating at me, and, nobody ever found your Don, though your information was clear enough that he should have been findable by now. Unless he was lying.
Sars, it is a hunch, a similarity. That doesn’t mean that i want to believe it. I think a guardian angel is a much nicer answer, an answer that you and I both might be much happier with.
They also tell you to wear a suit and carry a briefcase on business calls. I’m just saying.
It’s not so much that I don’t want this to be true; I don’t, but at this point I don’t so much care, because it’s not like the con worked, if it existed. It’s that I think it’s excessively complicated, as reasons for Don’s not surfacing go. Occam’s Razor, don’t you know.
I heard a trailer for you on the BBC!
‘Americana’ is Sunday evening (over here) programme on Radio 4, and the ‘next week…’ section mentioned a woman who maybe met an angel on 9/11. Or something like that. Is this you?
‘Tis! Should be available via free podcast as well; I’ll post a link when the producer sends it to me.
Having been hit on by guys using the Mystery Method or whatever it’s called, I highly doubt our (yes, I’m calling him Our!) Don was doing that. Most of these guys are not that good at it in the first place, let alone being able to maintain it under the extraordinary circumstances of the day.
Also, having met two normal, very cool guys recently under the age of 35 who refuse to join Facebook and barely even know what blogs are, I think it’s completely plausible that Don is just not a technophile. He’s out there living his life and it WILL be someone sitting next to him on a plane that will find him. @Valerie, I hope it’s you! : )
I passed the story on to a friend who used to live in Brooklyn and he said he’s going to start passing it around.
I’m sorry if this is rude, but to me, the idea that Don was trying to pick up Sarah is utterly ridiculous. Moreover, you have to show some care in the way you address people who have been through traumatic experiences. I think it is unkind to play around with this by darkly suggesting that Don was a con artist when there is absolutely nothing to suggest that’s the case.
Using the fact that a man in lower Manhattan was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase as any kind of an identifier is utterly nonsensical. And he didn’t say he was leaving town today/tonight. He didn’t say he was leaving town ever. Going home to Jersey City after coming into the city on business for the day is not “leaving town.”
“Neither of you knew when you met each other that 9/11 was going to be a very different, abnormal day”
What? They met in the lobby of the Bank Of New York after the World Trade Center was hit by a plane and the first building came down. There is no way you can read the piece and conclude that anyone was unaware that it was not a normal day when they were all *hiding in the bank lobby*.
“The guy who looked to me like your Don”? Would this be because he’s an African-American man of average height and weight who doesn’t look like anyone famous?
I’m sorry, but this line of speculation makes me very angry, and I think it’s inappropriate.
Anna, you never know. Maybe Sars hasn’t found Don because he moved from Jersey City to Australia after 9/11!
Or maybe he’s on a really long visit.
What the heck, if you have a place to post “Don? Don from the USA, born on September 11, is that you?” maybe you could do that.
You never know.
(If he turns up in Australia, I’m playing the lottery.)
I read the NY Times review of “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster” by Rebecca Solnits (http://tinyurl.com/m3t5ks) this last week, and it reminded me of Sars’ story.
I hope this is the year you find Don.
Sars, maybe this isn’t something you want to answer, but have you ever gone back there on the anniversary, back where you met Don? I dunno, I just wondered if maybe he goes back there, Just Because.
And even if he doesn’t ordinarily, maybe he would do it on the tenth anniversary. Tenth anniversaries sometimes do that to folks.
Also meant to add, you might try contacting Solnit, so if she’s doing any press (NPR interviews, book signings) she might mention it.
I think Don was an angel.
Sars, have you thought about submitting something to NPR about your experience with Don and your attempts to find him? I can already hear Ira Glass in my head introducing you (“For Thou Art With Us” post accompanied with Operation Find Don epilogue) on This American Life.
In the meantime, although I know very few people in the NYC area, I’m still going to post it on my Facebook. I think a lot of folks will enjoy reading the story even if they can’t help; I do every time I read it.