On the morning of 9-11, I battled through my slumber as I do most mornings and started my fast-paced routine. We were an afternoon newspaper then, so my mornings were about amassing the night’s crime in less than an hour beginning at 7:45 a.m. To keep from being distracted, I didn’t even turn on the television as I began my calls. I dialed Athens Fire and Rescue, and Dawn Blakely answered.
“You got anything going on?” I asked.
“Nothing like what’s going on in New York,” she replied.
“What’s going on there?” I asked.
“Girl, don’t you have your TV on?”
I turned it on and saw a gaping hole in one of the World Trade Center towers. The news said a plane hit it. I told Dawn I had to go and called my editor, Regina Wright. While we were on the phone, a second plane hit the second tower.
“(Insert curse word). This ain’t an accident,” Regina told me.
There wasn’t a TV in the newsroom at the time, so she told me to monitor the news and call her with updates. My friend and roommate Jennifer Hilton called to ask me what was going on because Redstone Arsenal had gone into lockdown. She worked with a yard maintenance crew there, and they had been out weed-eating when the arsenal locked down. Hilton said she didn’t know when she would be released.
I monitored the news until Regina called and told me to come in to start trying to reach anyone in New York who had a connection to our local area. Before I left, the news reported that a plane hit the Pentagon and one might be headed for the White House. I called Regina again.
“They’ve hit the Pentagon!” she yelled across the newsroom. “Oh, my God. This is it. The nuclear plant’s next. You need to get in. Come on in.”
I listened to the news coverage on the radio as I drove south on U.S. 31. Right before I got to the causeway, I heard a panicked correspondent report that one of the towers had crumbled. The anchor did not understand what she was trying to say and asked, “Part of the tower fell?”
“It’s gone. It’s gone. The whole tower is gone,” the correspondent said.
I had to pull over on the side of the road as grief hit me. I tried to call my friend Kim Hall Yang who moved from Alabama to New York, but I couldn’t get through. I didn’t know if her school was near the World Trade Center or if she would have been in the area.
Once I made it to the newsroom, the adrenaline hit. Meeting a deadline kept an entire newsroom from going numb or succumbing to fear. Everyone was on the phone trying to reach people we knew in New York or local families who had loved ones in New York.
Regina sent me that night to watch the news coverage with firefighters at Athens Fire and Rescue and record their reactions to seeing fellow firemen and police run into a fiery battlefield encased in glass, steel, and concrete to save those trying to escape the inferno.
When I got home, Hilton, Jennifer Sampieri, and I watched the news coverage until the early morning hours. We didn’t talk. We just stared at the television in shock.
The terrorist attack was this generation’s Pearl Harbor. On that day, we were all New Yorkers.
In the 10 years since, other countries, even those that initially expressed sympathy, have criticized us for engaging in war. Our economy has suffered. Many people express their hate of us.
America is not perfect. It is a country with a split personality. It has a bad side and a good side. Thankfully, this is a country where we can report on both.
I remember that after 9-11, I wrote a story about what was believed to be the first hate crime committed in response. It happened in Texas, and the killer, Mark Stroman, had lived for a time in Limestone County.
While we do have examples of hate in our history, we also have examples compassion and courage, such as what was seen on that day.
In the North Tower, Frank Martini and Pablo Ortiz ignored their own safety and helped give more than 70 people from the upper floors of the World Trade Center a chance to escape. They spared others’ lives only to lose their own.
On Flight 93, Todd Beamer and his fellow passengers learned of the attacks in New York and knew their hijacked plane was destined to become a weapon. They decided to fight back. The words, “Let’s roll,” were the last ones Todd uttered on the phone before the passengers ran to tackle a hijacker. The plane crashed in Pennsylvania, never hitting its target.
“Let’s roll,” became a battle cry.
Acts of compassion are seen each day in this country, and we also reach out to citizens of other nations. American students may be woefully ignorant of world geography, but let a tsunami, earthquake, or another natural disaster strike, and youngsters will start scrambling to collect pennies to send monetary aid to countries they can’t locate on a globe.
Hurricane Katrina or an EF5 tornado strikes here, and where are the pennies from school children from other nations? Where are the volunteers hopping on planes and coming here to help? We are expected to take care of our own, so we do, and yet, we never hesitate to help others.
Granted, we have our shortcomings. We have struggles to overcome.
But this is a country that has established an ideal that all are free and all have a chance to chase their dreams. We may not live our ideal each day, but each day we try, and each day we get a step closer.
Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning?
