9-11 Five Years Later, Remembering that Morning...
Five years ago I got to work as usual on a bright early fall day. After the usual routine, I turned on my TV (it was just assumed you had a TV as a department head in local TV), and there was a picture on the Today Show of smoke rising from the World Trade Center, a shot taken from 30 Rock (NBC) with the Empire State Building in between. I quickly checked AP. Nothing. I grabbed a screen shot, converted it to a 120-pixel-wide image, and planted it on the front page, frantically trying to think what I was going to write. Remember writing something about a fire or explosion there, we really had nothing yet. Then all hell broke loose. I was in a departmental meeting the GM called at 10:30, as we sat there stunned, watching the second tower collapse on the large-screen TV in the conference room. I reminded these local TV folks that I was covering this and excused myself. I didn't stop running for a long time. It was probably a good thing. I don't know what experiencing it would have been like otherwise. But it was a bad, bad day I'll never forget...