9/11
The following is an account I wrote back in 2015 about my experience covering 9/11 as a newly minted TV reporter.
8:59 AM.? September 11th, 2001.? I’m half asleep when my clock radio alarm goes off.? I’m still groggy, but in my haze I hear chatter in the background about a plane crashing into a building.? I perk up.? More talk of a burning skyscraper.? I pull myself out of bed and gravitate to the TV in my sparsely furnished apartment.
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Matt Lauer and Katie Couric are talking over live images of a burning World Trade Center.? It’s on a loop.? I call a good friend from college:? “Are you watching this?? Can you fucking believe it?? This has to be an accident.”
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For the next three hours, I’m glued to the coverage.? I’m hanging on every image, every word, and like the rest of the world, I’m in shock.? I feel helpless.
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I’m just two months into my first “real” job as a TV reporter in Augusta, Ga.? I’m fresh-faced, bushy-tailed, and na?ve.? I’ve covered my fair share of murder and mayhem at this point in my short career, but nothing like this.? Nothing.
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My nightside shift technically doesn’t start for a few hours, but I call the assignment desk.? “Yes, come in.? We need bodies,” they tell me.?
It’s a small newsroom, but it’s bustling when I arrive.? Our sister station in Roanoke (the same station where a reporter and photographer were recently murdered), had a crew in Shanksville, Pa.? My first assignment is to record a phone interview with their reporter on the ground and pick out some sound for our live coverage.? The reporter I interview is shell-shocked.?
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I’m dispatched with a photographer to a blood bank where the line had snaked around the block.? We set up our truck, pull cable, and within minutes we’re sending back images of people doing whatever they can to help.? I interview a woman who’d never given blood before, was afraid of needles, but giving that day was the only way she knew to help.? I meet many people like her that day, looking for an outlet for their grief.? My day stretches on for 15 hours. ??
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A few days later, we learn of our first “local” connection the attacks, a New York transplant named Joanne Kennelly, whose brother, Paul Tegtmeier, was among the first firefighters to respond to the WTC.
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He’s missing and feared dead.? Kennelly welcomes us into her apartment for an interview.? She’s distraught, but bursting with pride about her older brother, who’d quit his job to follow his passion in the fire service.? She vacillates between tears and smiles.? I try to find the questions to ask her without coming off like a vulture.? She’s as gracious as she is scared.? She’s glued to her phone and to television coverage for any shred of hope her brother’s still alive.
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Days passed before the gravity of that day set in and I felt real, visceral emotions.? As journalists we’re taught to bottle them up and do the job, to tell the story.? This story was a big exception.
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14 years later that day still haunts me, as does the story of Paul Tegtmeier.?
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I wonder how his family is doing, how his kids handled growing up without their father, how Joanne Kennelly has coped without her brother.? I pray they are doing well.? God Bless them and all those we lost that horrible day.? God Bless America.
Postscript:
I eventually reconnected with Joanne and learned that Paul's son followed in his father's footsteps to join the NYFD. May his memory and the memories of those killed that day always be a blessing.