It has been quite a while since I've tried my hand at the blogging thing. I have a new job that has taken me out of a daily newsroom and away from writing in that structured sense, but I am hoping this blog will become the outlet I have been craving ever since I left. That said, what better way to nudge me back into my craft than Mama Kat's Writing Workshop? If I do these on a regular basis, it will be good for my soul.
Each week, we are asked to choose one of several prompts to write about. Among this week's options: Memories of 9/11. How could I not pick that one? The day still haunts me. I share it here - the 'work' part, filling the endless hours as a journalist at the time, and the 'personal' part after learning two classmates were in the WTC that day, one of whom was a FDNY firefighter.
I learned of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center on the radio – listening to Howard Stern of all places on the dial. The thought of a terrorist attack did not dawn on me at first. I attributed the crash to pilot error and a catastrophic accident. But by the time I arrived in the newsroom, only about 5 minutes later, I knew that was not the case and I knew the world was forever changed. As a native of New York, and someone who used to commute on the PATH train beneath the World Trade Center, I was rocked to my core.
There was an unprecedented amount of activity at our small weekly newspaper. I remember thinking we have got to be the only newsroom in America without a TV. I grabbed a colleague and we made the 5 minute drive back to my apartment, raced into the living room, unplugged the TV and loaded it into the car. It stayed in the newsroom for weeks after and I did not care.
I worked for a newspaper in the Baltimore metropolitan area. Many of the communities we cover consist of government employees who commute into D.C. My managing editor immediately had us working the phones to find local families who may have had loved ones at the Pentagon. When all was said and done, our county had seven families with connections to people who either died at the Pentagon or on the plane that slammed into it. I interviewed members of each of those families. To this day, they were the hardest interviews I have ever had to do.
Meanwhile, growing up in New York, I was very worried about people I knew who commuted daily into Manhattan. At the top of that list of worries: my youngest brother, Kevin, who worked in Manhattan, commuting from his Jersey City apartment. How I ever managed to concentrate on my job while also trying to find out about his welfare, his whereabouts, I will never know. I truly feel I have blocked out a lot of what I felt like that day from my memory. The phone lines were all jammed up. My other siblings and family members were calling each other all day ‘Have you heard anything?” "Any word?” Nothing. Finally, an email. “I saw the plane hit. We are OK. We are safe.” I went into the ladies room at work and cried a full 10 minutes. I still have that email, ten years later. My brother later told me that he and another man, a complete stranger to him at the time, ran through the streets together and helped each other to get out of the city. Ten years later, they still keep in touch. I met him once, John, and hugged him with tears in my eyes for helping my little brother stay safe.
Meanwhile, back at the paper, one by one, my fellow reporters and I tracked down our local families. We thought we had reached them all by the time the second week of coverage rolled around and many of the victims' names had started to appear on various lists. I was proud of the work we had done, featuring a photo of each of our local people lost that day on our cover. Then a call came at my desk from a woman sobbing, “You didn’t mention my son! My son!” It turns out this woman’s grown son also died at the Pentagon but we had missed his name somehow. I will never forget the heartbreak in that woman’s voice. Eventually, I met each of these families in person. I still have my notebooks. I can’t bear to throw them out. And I still keep in touch with some of those I met in those early days of grief and madness.
The night of Sept. 11, I was assigned to cover a prayer service. I sat in the church with my notebook on my lap and tears streaming down my face. The woman next to me said “You look like you could use a hug. May I?” And, knowing it was not the hard-nosed news reporter, responding, I said “Yes, thank you so much.” And I hugged her and cried and did not care who saw me.
All of these things happened before I ever learned about the loss of a high school friend and classmate at the World Trade Center. After his body was found seven months later, I wrote a column about him which ran in my paper. You can read that here.
Rest in peace, Denis.
