By Scott Brinton
Proto was seated at his desk on the 10th floor when he got the order to evacuate shortly after American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower at 8:46 a.m. He left, no questions asked, and muddled through Lower Manhattan amid a crowd of thousands.
When the south tower thundered to the ground, Proto raced down Broadway. Behind him, a billowing, gray dust cloud enveloped everything in its path. Proto and his colleague Sus Minors were soaked in sweat and ash when they arrived soon after at the New York Athletic Club, which served as a respite station for survivors. There they washed up and prepped themselves for the long journey home.
"We were OK," Proto said. "We were more shook up than anything else."
Proto called his wife, Mary, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and took a train home from Kings County. He was, he understands, fortunate.
The Deutsche Bank building, at 130 Liberty St., sustained some of the worst damage of any structure surrounding the World Trade Center. After the Sept. 11 catastrophe, the building was declared unsound, and for five years it sat waiting to be razed. Demolition finally began this summer. Now shrouded in scaffolding, the structure hums with the sound of workers dismantling the skyscraper piece by piece. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation bought the structure from Deutsche Bank, and the site will be incorporated into the new 1,776-foot Freedom Tower plaza that will replace the World Trade Center.
On Sept. 12, 2001, Proto was back at work as a Deutsche Bank risk-management analyst and vice president, performing his duties from his kitchen table via the Internet. Five years later, Proto, like so many Bellmore-Merrick residents who earn a living in the financial sector, rides the Long Island Rail Road into the city every weekday, and then catches a subway from Brooklyn or Midtown to Lower Manhattan, where he still works for Deutsche Bank. Now, however, his office is at 60 Wall St., which the bank acquired after Sept. 11.
Proto, 54, thinks often of that terrible day. But he is unafraid. "We've got to go on and live our lives. You can't live in fear; if you do that, that means the terrorists win," he said.
Sixty-hour weeks
Proto begins each workday at 5 a.m. He watches Bloomberg financial news for an hour, hops the 7:29 train from Bellmore into the city and reads The Wall Street Journal on his way in. He lands at the Wall Street subway stop around 8:30 a.m. An escalator carries him from the hot, musty station to an expansive foyer with soaring, arched ceilings coated with white marble tiles. Wire-mesh tables and potted plastic palm trees are scattered throughout the foyer. Proto might grab a cup of coffee at the deli and sit to collect his thoughts for a few minutes before walking next door to the Deutsche Bank building. He's at his desk by 9 a.m., where he often remains until 6 or 7 p.m. Then he takes the train back home, arriving between 8 and 9 p.m.
It's a long, exhausting day.
Proto's work is highly technical. He rates the financial health of the many Australian and North, Central and South American companies in which Deutsche Bank invests its money - billions of dollars of it. Deutsche Bank, a German company, is among the world's largest financial institutions, with roughly 63,000 employees.
Proto and the eight colleagues in his department can't be wrong in their financial assessments. Omnipresent U.S. government regulators check and triple-check their work. The regulators even have their own floor of offices in the Deustche Bank building. If bank officials like Proto were too sanguine in their financial analyses, the company could face stiff penalties, including, in a worst-case scenario, closure of the bank. So analysts like Proto spend weeks and months poring over companies' quarterly and annual balance sheets and earnings reports, while paying close attention to the world events that might affect their bottom lines. And many analysts, including Proto, travel overseas at least once a year, spending time in Deutsche Bank offices from England to Germany, Brazil and Australia. As a result, the bank has never received anything less than the highest marks for the accuracy of its ratings.
A nearly lifelong North Bellmore resident, Proto graduated from Mepham High School in 1970 and earned his master's of business administration from Hofstra University in May of 1979. Two weeks later he started work in the internal-auditing department of Bankers Trust, and moved into risk-management analysis two years later. Deutsche Bank took over Bankers Trust in June of 2000.
"I was told when I started, 'Everything is a risk. You have to balance risk and reward,'" said Proto.
Scott Masonis, a colleague of Proto's, said of the work, "You don't get bored. There's always a new industry to learn about. You pull things together - what your read in The Wall Street Journal, on TV, your own intuition."
Proto's boss, Beverly Cason, regional head of the Americas for asset-quality review, said the typical analyst puts in 50 to 60 hours a week on the job. "You're constantly working," she said. "Vince is a very valuable member" of the team. "He knows the industries. He's very well read."
Looking out for others
Proto is also said to be a decent human being. Married for 28 years to Mary, an accountant, he is the father of three - Catherine, 26, Anne Marie, 23, and Nicholas, 20. Despite his demanding work schedule, he gives much of his free time to the Mepham High School Sports Boosters Association and the Mepham Alumni Association, and has served as president of both. In 2005, he was selected as the Mepham Homecoming Parade grand marshal. All three of his children were outstanding athletes and scholars at Mepham.
Gemma Peluso Bienz, who graduated from Mepham with Proto, said he is "one of the kindest people I know. He helps everybody. He helps his mom. He helps his family. He volunteers for all sorts of things."
Now, when Proto's thoughts return to Sept. 11, he wonders, "Why did this happen? We all have to work at our relationships, just improving the relationships with our fellow man."
