story1861.xml
Title
story1861.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-09-07
911DA Story: Story
This is the journal entry I wrote when I got home the night of Sept. 11.
It?s after 11 p.m. on September 11, 2001, and my eyes are burning. So is my stomach.
I walked into the newsroom at the Akron Beacon Journal at 9 a.m. on the dot, expecting a leisurely day of editing stories for Sunday?s section about Bob Dylan, Stephen King, new movies on video, memories of an old church. But before I could even get to my desk and toss my purse and satchel off my shoulder, one of our features editors, Betsy Lammerding, went past me looking grim. ?A plane just hit the World Trade Center,? she said.
My first thought was that things like this shouldn?t happen in this age of modern air-traffic control. I joined a circle of people gathered around one of the newsroom TVs, just as someone said ?Oh my God, another one.? Horrifying video of a plane smashing through the other tower, bursting in flames out the other side and showering debris down onto the streets below.
Still, my brain didn?t quite register. Accident? Massive air-traffic screwup?
Oh, my God. No mistake, no accident. My purse and bag suddenly felt a whole lot heavier. There were gasps around the room. No one moved.
One of our columnists, standing behind me, said, ?It?s bin Laden.?
Then we were all in motion. People shouting or hustling across the room, phones ringing, computer keys rattling. Plans were made instantly. There was no question that we?d be publishing an extra today.
The managing editor came to my desk, announced to my boss that he was stealing me, and fired off on the way back to the metro area all the things that were already on the budget for the extra. I was proud to be part of the team, and the journalist half of my brain was fully engaged.
We who work in this business can be odd people. When news is breaking, we?re the hardest of hardasses, thinking nothing but ?This is a HUGE story.? Dave Adams and I were in charge of the wire service feeds, scanning for and pulling stories that might work for our special edition, editing some and passing some off to other editors, weaving everything together. Scene stories from Washington and New York. The text of Bush?s brief speech. Working with the art department on a map of the targets that changed every few minutes.
But every time a new horror would appear at the top of the wire, it would take me back a step or two. People leaping from the top floors of the buildings. Cell phone calls from the doomed airliners. The two towers collapsing on top of victims and their rescuers. ?Jesus,? I kept repeating. ?The towers are fucking GONE?? Dave said, to himself as much as me, ?Stay focused. Think about it after.?
About three and a half hours after the first plane?s impact, forty thousand copies of our Extra hit the streets. Nothing is more of a thrill to our journalistic rat-brain, except maybe the words ?Stop the presses!? which nobody ever says anymore. The headline was a quote, screaming over the picture of the fireball, ?OH, MY GOD!?
After the Extra printed, everyone stood around for about an hour, eating pizza although nobody was really hungry, watching the news feeds with wide eyes and grim faces. This was the ?after? time Dave talked about, when we all let the enormity of the disaster sink in a little before having to return to work.
My mom called, saying she knew I was safe, but she just had to talk to me. Lots of others were doing the same. It took several tries to get back to her because the phone lines were jammed.
We had a meeting at 1 p.m. to plan coverage for the next day. Our own fears and concerns bubbled to the surface here, along with those we tried to anticipate the readers would have; a friend with a 17-year-old son said she was terrified that this would lead to a new military draft; another said he wanted to know how to get through and find out whether loved ones were all right; another wondered how to tell his kids, let alone how to cope with it himself.
I sent e-mails to two friends in the devastated area and awaited news on a third.
Focus. Go to more meetings, volunteer to edit stories. Cringe at every new gruesome report, but keep plowing through.
Kathy heard from one of our friends in New York. He was safe and he had accounted for all his friends in the city. [Later, I would find out that he had been at the World Trade Center the day before -- and had dropped off his response card for my upcoming wedding in a mailbox in the lobby. I never received it. So there's a tiny part of my life that was buried in the rubble.] I got a somber e-mail from another friend in New Jersey, who was watching from his windows and said it was so much worse than we could comprehend just by looking at the TV.
By about 6 p.m., I?d moved all my stories and was catching up on the latest information. The horror seemed to be settling in with my colleagues. The New York skyline looked like a grimace with its front teeth punched out. None of us could quite wrap our minds around the fact that those two giant buildings, and all the people inside, were just gone.
My brother phoned, and he and I talked about piloting planes, about how he might explain this to his inquisitive and bright five-year-old son.
I left work around 8 p.m., an 11-hour day. It felt like forever since Betsy had told me the first news, but it also felt as though it were just an hour ago. Driving home, I saw people lined up at the gas stations, fearful of higher prices. I saw St. Sebastian?s and Christ Methodist with their lights on and doors open. I saw so many people on the streets, jogging, walking dogs, clustered in front lawns. I stopped to talk to Kellie and Dan, my neighbors who are getting married just a month before Marc and I are, who were out walking their dog. They said the puppy was jumpy tonight, very tense and nervous. Animals know more about their humans? moods than we give them credit for.
When I pulled into my driveway, the latest radio report was telling me that 200 firemen and rescue workers were feared dead in the collapse. In my rear-view mirror, I saw my neighbor Jennifer. She was standing by the fence with her Dalmatian.
We talked. She said she got home early because her office shut down; she spent the afternoon trying to reach friends in New York. Then she went over to a friend?s house, just because neither of them wanted to be alone.
Ten minutes later, Kellie came over, and we watched the news and shook our heads and pondered what kind of world we live in. Our future anniversaries will always have this stain.
People just needed to talk about this.
That?s probably why I felt compelled to write. The scope of this disaster is so far beyond my comprehension, so far beyond precedent. I hear comparisons to Pearl Harbor and I can?t imagine how this attack on innocent people isn?t so much worse. I don?t want to forget the depth of fear and disgust and pit-of-the-stomach sickness I felt today.
As I said earlier, we journalist types have to focus on the story when we?re working. It isn?t until after we get home that we?re allowed to cry.
It?s after 11 p.m. on September 11, 2001, and my eyes are burning. So is my stomach.
I walked into the newsroom at the Akron Beacon Journal at 9 a.m. on the dot, expecting a leisurely day of editing stories for Sunday?s section about Bob Dylan, Stephen King, new movies on video, memories of an old church. But before I could even get to my desk and toss my purse and satchel off my shoulder, one of our features editors, Betsy Lammerding, went past me looking grim. ?A plane just hit the World Trade Center,? she said.
My first thought was that things like this shouldn?t happen in this age of modern air-traffic control. I joined a circle of people gathered around one of the newsroom TVs, just as someone said ?Oh my God, another one.? Horrifying video of a plane smashing through the other tower, bursting in flames out the other side and showering debris down onto the streets below.
Still, my brain didn?t quite register. Accident? Massive air-traffic screwup?
Oh, my God. No mistake, no accident. My purse and bag suddenly felt a whole lot heavier. There were gasps around the room. No one moved.
One of our columnists, standing behind me, said, ?It?s bin Laden.?
Then we were all in motion. People shouting or hustling across the room, phones ringing, computer keys rattling. Plans were made instantly. There was no question that we?d be publishing an extra today.
The managing editor came to my desk, announced to my boss that he was stealing me, and fired off on the way back to the metro area all the things that were already on the budget for the extra. I was proud to be part of the team, and the journalist half of my brain was fully engaged.
We who work in this business can be odd people. When news is breaking, we?re the hardest of hardasses, thinking nothing but ?This is a HUGE story.? Dave Adams and I were in charge of the wire service feeds, scanning for and pulling stories that might work for our special edition, editing some and passing some off to other editors, weaving everything together. Scene stories from Washington and New York. The text of Bush?s brief speech. Working with the art department on a map of the targets that changed every few minutes.
But every time a new horror would appear at the top of the wire, it would take me back a step or two. People leaping from the top floors of the buildings. Cell phone calls from the doomed airliners. The two towers collapsing on top of victims and their rescuers. ?Jesus,? I kept repeating. ?The towers are fucking GONE?? Dave said, to himself as much as me, ?Stay focused. Think about it after.?
About three and a half hours after the first plane?s impact, forty thousand copies of our Extra hit the streets. Nothing is more of a thrill to our journalistic rat-brain, except maybe the words ?Stop the presses!? which nobody ever says anymore. The headline was a quote, screaming over the picture of the fireball, ?OH, MY GOD!?
After the Extra printed, everyone stood around for about an hour, eating pizza although nobody was really hungry, watching the news feeds with wide eyes and grim faces. This was the ?after? time Dave talked about, when we all let the enormity of the disaster sink in a little before having to return to work.
My mom called, saying she knew I was safe, but she just had to talk to me. Lots of others were doing the same. It took several tries to get back to her because the phone lines were jammed.
We had a meeting at 1 p.m. to plan coverage for the next day. Our own fears and concerns bubbled to the surface here, along with those we tried to anticipate the readers would have; a friend with a 17-year-old son said she was terrified that this would lead to a new military draft; another said he wanted to know how to get through and find out whether loved ones were all right; another wondered how to tell his kids, let alone how to cope with it himself.
I sent e-mails to two friends in the devastated area and awaited news on a third.
Focus. Go to more meetings, volunteer to edit stories. Cringe at every new gruesome report, but keep plowing through.
Kathy heard from one of our friends in New York. He was safe and he had accounted for all his friends in the city. [Later, I would find out that he had been at the World Trade Center the day before -- and had dropped off his response card for my upcoming wedding in a mailbox in the lobby. I never received it. So there's a tiny part of my life that was buried in the rubble.] I got a somber e-mail from another friend in New Jersey, who was watching from his windows and said it was so much worse than we could comprehend just by looking at the TV.
By about 6 p.m., I?d moved all my stories and was catching up on the latest information. The horror seemed to be settling in with my colleagues. The New York skyline looked like a grimace with its front teeth punched out. None of us could quite wrap our minds around the fact that those two giant buildings, and all the people inside, were just gone.
My brother phoned, and he and I talked about piloting planes, about how he might explain this to his inquisitive and bright five-year-old son.
I left work around 8 p.m., an 11-hour day. It felt like forever since Betsy had told me the first news, but it also felt as though it were just an hour ago. Driving home, I saw people lined up at the gas stations, fearful of higher prices. I saw St. Sebastian?s and Christ Methodist with their lights on and doors open. I saw so many people on the streets, jogging, walking dogs, clustered in front lawns. I stopped to talk to Kellie and Dan, my neighbors who are getting married just a month before Marc and I are, who were out walking their dog. They said the puppy was jumpy tonight, very tense and nervous. Animals know more about their humans? moods than we give them credit for.
When I pulled into my driveway, the latest radio report was telling me that 200 firemen and rescue workers were feared dead in the collapse. In my rear-view mirror, I saw my neighbor Jennifer. She was standing by the fence with her Dalmatian.
We talked. She said she got home early because her office shut down; she spent the afternoon trying to reach friends in New York. Then she went over to a friend?s house, just because neither of them wanted to be alone.
Ten minutes later, Kellie came over, and we watched the news and shook our heads and pondered what kind of world we live in. Our future anniversaries will always have this stain.
People just needed to talk about this.
That?s probably why I felt compelled to write. The scope of this disaster is so far beyond my comprehension, so far beyond precedent. I hear comparisons to Pearl Harbor and I can?t imagine how this attack on innocent people isn?t so much worse. I don?t want to forget the depth of fear and disgust and pit-of-the-stomach sickness I felt today.
As I said earlier, we journalist types have to focus on the story when we?re working. It isn?t until after we get home that we?re allowed to cry.
Collection
Citation
“story1861.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 21, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/16763.