In a week of rekindled friendships, this morning's call was the least expect yet perhaps the most necessary.
Court Squires shouted from Philly just as I arrived at work and brought me back to the terrible morning seven years ago. Everyone owns a 9-11 memory - mine happened to be a working one, when a lazy, post-deadline day twisted into a frantic, immediate journalism and a story dictated to Dennis Laycock via the Columbus Police media room phone.
It was a strange shared moment. A newsroom of groggy reporters roused to life by the biggest news story they ever faced. I came back from a morning smoke to a suddenly enlivened newsroom buzzing about "a small plane accidentally crashing into the World Trade Center."
Court and I both knew immediately plans don't accidentally crash into symbols of American financial power that extremists already tried to destroy. A few minutes later, another plan wiped away all the speculation.
Without Court's call, I might have slinked through this day having never thought about that chaotic morning.
As with the continual rebroadcast of that footage in the past seven years, I would have been fine with that.
The subsequent details, both national and personal, have been repeated ad nauseum. While my newspaper days have ended, what a day that was to be a working journalist. With the industry in shambles, we recount those world-changing days like war veterans.
1 comment:
As interesting as that day was in the newsroom (I had forgotten about typing out that story as you spoke), the most memorable part for me was arriving home and feeling more worn out than I had ever felt before. And some friends called: "Let's get together." We stayed up way later than we should have for a Tuesday night, first talking about the day, gradually segueing into "The Simpsons" and laughing so hard. Never did emotional release feel so good.
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