Remembering Sept. 11, 2001
Has it really been six years? Sept. 11, 2001 was the second major news event I experienced while working in the Florida Times-Union newsroom. The first was the 2000 presidential election (I'm still reminded of that night in many ways, but I digress). I lived in Fernandina Beach and usually enjoyed the 45-minute commute to my downtown Jacksonville office each day. That fateful day was no different. I was on the road from about 8 a.m. to almost 9 -- just before the live news accounts hit the radio stations. I was oblivious to the first plane hitting the Towers until I arrived at work. I walked into the spacious but quiet newsroom to find the usual small group of early-morning folks huddled and talking. Only something was different this time. They were all standing in front of one of the newsroom television screens and watching what appeared to be a large building on fire. The closer I got to the screen, the better I could make out the building's identity. No one was saying much, only repeating the television news speculation that a fire had somehow started in one of the World Trade Center towers and it possibly started after a small plane crashed into it. I walked over to my cubicle, set down my things and looked back at the TV just in time to see the other tower spew a large ball of flame and loud reaction from the small group near me. "Wow, did you see that!?!" one of them said. Of course, we found out later it was the second plane that caused that explosion. Within the next 30 minutes, several dozen staffers arrived at work and shared discussion and focus on the scene that unfolded. Soon we learned a plane had gone down in Pennsylvania. President Bush was whisked away on Air Force One to an undisclosed aerial location. What happened next felt like an old but reliable lawn mower who's engine needed to be primed a bit before running full speed to get the job done. Editors started barking out orders. Phones began ringing a few at a time, and then all the time. Reporters started making calls and shouting out responses after hanging up. Many of us sat in front of computers and watched the wire service news of the scene in New York City appear on their screens. Within the next hour, the decision was made to put out an extra edition on the streets of Jacksonville containing the wire news and photos that were appearing, along with as much locally connected news as we could muster. One of the TV news stations popped over to film our efforts for their 6 p.m. newscast. The edition hit the streets by early afternoon. The pictures were mesmerizing as they were terrible. One showed a body falling from one of the towers. At some point, someone shouted that one of the towers was going down. We all watched with horror as the first tower was lost. Within minutes the other one disintegrated, too. The stories managed by the reporters and photographers that poured into the wires that day gave sometimes graphic accounts of the chaos. By the time I left for the night at about 9 p.m., I was exhausted and confused and angry. As I pulled my car onto Interstate 95 to head for home, I realized I had forgotten something. Sept. 11 was my mother's birthday, and I hadn't called her yet to wish her well. The irony of the days events falling on her birthday washed over me. Others would find more troublesome connections with the day, to be sure. I pulled out my cell phone and called mom. "What a day for a birthday, huh?" I said to her. "Yeah, it's unbelievable," she said. Then it hit me. The undeniable truth of the day's events came into focus all at once through one of the last scenes I witnessed on a newsroom television before leaving. There was a huge hole in the New York skyline. "Mom, I mean ... they're gone. They're just gone," was all I could say. "I know. It's so terrible." mom said. Looking back, I know I'll never forget where I was or what I was doing on that awful day. In some respects I had an advantage in seeing all the wire stories before they could hit the Internet or airwaves during the course of the day. But I'm still struck by the irony of it happening on my mother's birthday. Now I have another important reason not to forget Sept. 11 each year. I'd really like to know how others experienced that day -- please respond to this blog and tell a bit about your thoughts and prayers and opinions. Thanks, Kevin Related: KevinClark's blog | login or register to post comments | printer friendly version | Tags: editor
Submitted by Vernreturns on Thu, 09/13/2007 - 10:48am.
Lord, give me less to do and more time to do it!! Submitted by Vernreturns on Thu, 09/13/2007 - 11:22am.
I was in New York on the Long Island Expressway sitting in traffic on my way to work, when the radio station announced that a plane had hit one of the towers at the World Trade Center, at the same time my husband called to tell me the same information, but both were vague as to what type of plane it was. When I arrived at work and got off the elevator I was told that a second plane had hit the other tower, at which time the nightmare began. We put the TV on and started calling friends and family as we watched in horror the events that were enfolding in front of us. I will never forget the day. My husband called and said that he was coming by, he was leaving work. He came to my office and hugged me and then he left to pick up my daughter at school. He just wanted to hug her. My sister couldn't talk; she couldn't reach her husband, an electrician in New York City, who (she thought) was working in the towers. She later learned with the help of her son that he had been transferred to another job the day before the attack. Both my nephew and his father walked home from Manhattan to Brooklyn. We also learned that my cousin who worked across the street from the towers, made it out. But we have friends and neighbors that were not as lucky. My friend Marie lost her cousin Peter Ganci, Chief of Department with the New York City Fire Department. My high school friend Geri-Anne, lost her brother George Howard. He was a police officer with the Port Authority. It was his day off too! He was also there in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. President Bush held George's badge during a speech before Congress. There were more stories that unfolded and pictures on TV of the missing, people searching for loved ones for many days following the attack. Then there were the funerals. Sometimes there were too many to follow. It is a day that will not be forgotten, but let's hope and pray it doesn't happen again.
Submitted by MarkPettus on Thu, 09/13/2007 - 9:11pm.
Since I like quiet in the morning, I didn't watch TV or listen to the radio until I got into my truck to drive to work. The DJs were making fun of a reporter on CNN, a young woman, who had announced a 737 had flown into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. "Do you have any idea how big a 737 is?" One of them asked. "A plane that big would knock the building down." My first thoughts were that this was nothing new. I remembered the story about an Army Air Corps plane that flew into the Empire State Building years before. My truck had a tire with a slow leak that I hadn't bothered to fix, so I stopped most mornings to add air, and did on that morning as well. I left the radio on and opened the passenger door so I could hear as I put air in the tire. When they announced that a second plane had hit the other tower I realized that the first was no accident. I dropped my tire guage on the ground, leapt into my truck and drove away - leaving the expensive digital guage behind. When I got to the office, we all gathered around the televisions and watched as the towers fell. My office was in the flight path for Love Field, the airport John F. Kennedy flew into the day he was assasinated in Dallas. Every day the sky over my head was filled with aircraft. When the FAA ordered them all grounded, I stepped outside and scanned the skies. It was the first time I can remember being in Dallas and not being able to see an airplane. The world changed that day, and not for the better. 19 men with box cutters, which were perfectly legal to own and to carry onto planes, turned the land of the free and the home of the brave into a country so afraid that people were willing to trade their freedoms for any illusion of safety. The Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, American citizens and foreigners held without charges and denied legal protections, men and women arrested for wearing t-shirts critical of the president, the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, Guantanamo, Abu-Ghraib, American soldiers - the men and women I had served beside for years - torturing prisioners.... If the goal of terrorists is to instill terror, to scare people enough they abandon their own principals and change their way of life - and I think that was their goal - then the terrorists won. Americans did all of those things, and it took the combined the cowardice of both Republicans and Democrats to dismantle the constitution and allow the things that have passed for the war on terror to occur. No one in power had the guts to say stop, until it was too late. Thinking men and woman are now far more afraid of the unchecked power of American government than they ever were of terrorists. 19 men with boxcutters changed the world, and the America I grew up in, loved, and defended is gone. I hope we can find her again before its too late. |
Who's online
There are currently 0 users and 22 guests online.
Recent comments |
Kevin, I was working at Arlington Toyota that morning. The news hit the TV in the customer lounge area. The first tower was on fire. As I was standing there watching the live picture, the second plane came into view and the second tower burst into flames. I was just frozen in complete disbelief for about 5 or 10 seconds. Then I realized that we, (our country), was under an attack.
As devastating as the unfolding events were, my boss insisted I get back to work since we had much to do in the mornings. Later I heard about the crash into the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania. My earlier suspicions were confirmed.
Emotionally I was feeling helpless about the people that died, but another side of me, being retired military, was angry as Hell. Before it was confirmed, I knew what had happened. I'm a retired air traffic controller, so I KNOW "mistakes" like that just don't happen. It was an orchestrated attack. My only fear was that we would fiind out it was someone that we would have to nuke. The prospect for this event starting a nuclear war loomed in the back of my mind. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis so I'm familiar with the "feeling"!
In the days and weeks that followed, the mourning and sadness for all the victims began to dominate my feelings about it. Of course, after it was announced that it was a Bin Laden attack, I wanted to kill that man worse than anything in the world. I still do!
Our greatest generation never forgot Pearl Harbor and our generation needs to never forget September 11, 2001.