25 years is a long time, yet in this case it feels like yesterday. I still remember the morning of September 11, 2002 vividly as I was live on the radio when it all happened and the world has never been the same since.
The early morning hours of September 11, 2001 were beautiful - I remember how blue the sky was that morning
I was the morning show guy on a radio station in Quincy, Illinois on 9/11/01. My radio show in that era was notorious for having hundreds of phone calls every day many of which would end up on the air. As I recall, we were up to our typical nonsense having fun in between songs and playing requests, but that mood changed just after 8:46am when the breaking news started spreading that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. My first thought was that a small plane must have had a malfunction and collided with the tower. We had a computer in our studio, but no TV at the time. I remember checking one of the news sites and immediately knew whatever hit the tower wasn't small.
There was so much confusion after the report of the first plane as no one knew if this was a tragic accident or something more sinister. That question was answered at 9:03am when reports came in that a second plane had crashed into the South Tower. It was shortly after that when the music stopped.
Our radio leadership team at the time made the quick decision that we needed to stop the regular morning show and switch our music station over to national news coverage and that's what we did. The music went silent and we stopped answering the phone and we listened and we watched online coverage in disbelief of what we were witnessing.
That disbelief turned to legitimate fear at 9:37am when a plane crashed into the Pentagon and there were reports a plane might be headed toward the White House. At 9:45am, the report came in that the FAA had ordered all civilian planes to land. Speculation was rampant. Were these plane attacks just the first part of a larger enemy attack? Who was responsible? As I look back, those thoughts seem outlandish now, but they weren't that morning. There was much more that we didn't know about what happened than the facts of what we did know.
The South Tower crashed to the ground at 9:59am followed by the North Tower less than a half hour later. What had started out as a beautiful September morning was now almost unimaginable tragedy. I don't remember much of what was said in our radio studio once the towers fell, but I do remember the silence.
The rest of that day is a blur, but there are still some very vivid and I will admit unpleasant memories that remain clear to me to this day. We had several important meetings that were originally planned for the morning of 9/11/01. All of those were immediately canceled. At the time, I was living in Hannibal, Missouri and I remember driving back home with the intention of filling up my gas tank as word was spreading that local stations were seeing huge numbers. I remember arriving at the gas station where I witnessed borderline panic which included some fender benders as everyone decided to gas up while they could.
Other than the sadness for those who lost their lives in the attacks, I remember one of my first emotions was anger. I am not going to lie about what I felt. I wanted our country to seek vengeance against whoever or whatever was responsible. I don't like remembering that feeling, but I'm not going to be dishonest and say I didn't feel that way initially. Eventually, I remember unbelievable unity that resulted from the nation's response to the attacks. That's the one aspect of the first days after 9/11 that I miss.
Lots of things have changed over the past 25 years since that awful September morning. Some good. Some not so much. The world's a lot less innocent now than it was that before 8:46am September 11, 2001. There's no going back to that time, but I'm hopeful we can somehow find a way to embrace that love your neighbor vibe and American unity that were on display on September 12, 2001.
