Upheaval takes many guises

By LEONORA LAPETER

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 17, 2001

[Times photo: Jennifer Davis] In the wake of Tuesday’s terrorist attack, Van Lawrence has found herself looking for a job.

Secretary Van Lawrence sat at her desk in a St. Petersburg law office Tuesday morning. Her boss, a lawyer, was angry again.

She could hear him banging the phone on a table upstairs and swearing because Lawrence had somehow lost his wife's phone call. Meanwhile, the news of first one plane, then another, crashing into the World Trade Center had just begun to filter in over the TV.

Lawrence tried to answer phones and file papers. The South Tower collapsed. Then the North Tower. An airliner flew into the Pentagon.

The 27-year-old got to thinking. She had previously worked for a chemical company for 21/2 years. She'd been on this job for a week, but her new boss was always angry with her.

"It made me think about life, and how I can be next and I can get hurt anytime," Lawrence said a day later while shopping at Burdines in Tyrone Square Mall. "I realized that life is too short and why should I stick it out where I don't want to be? I need to do something that makes me happier."

Lawrence has dreams of dressing the stars someday. This day, the day terrorists attacked Americans in New York City and Washington, D.C., she got up the courage to talk to her boss.

She says he told her he didn't want to talk. So she walked back to her desk, picked up her bag, told the office manager she was leaving and quit.

A day later, she and a friend wandered through Burdines. She held a bag with a black and gray miniskirt she'd purchased for $10. She was considering a fuchsia sleeveless turtleneck for $9.99 to go with it.

"I go shopping when I'm depressed," Lawrence said with a laugh.

But even as she joked, Lawrence's worries seemed to be mounting. The $470 rent on her Pinellas Park apartment is due at the end of the month, and she has only half of it. She applied for two jobs Wednesday but one had been filled and the other may have had requirements that were over her head.

Thursday, depression had taken over and Lawrence's voice was barely a whisper.

"Maybe I was in denial yesterday," she said. "It didn't really hit me, ya know? I just started thinking, I'm going to be homeless in two weeks."

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