Washington Examiner staff share their Sept. 11 stories

Susan Ferrechio McKelway – Chief Congressional Correspondent

I was covering the attack for the Miami Herald, walking on a path leading away from the Pentagon. I ran into Donn Marshall, who was walking away from the wreckage. He had snuck onto the site with a bunch of workers who were trucked in to dig through the debris.

But Marshall was really looking for his own wife, who had been working in an office in the Pentagon’s doomed southwest side. Marshall had stayed there for hours, digging through the rubble with the volunteers. His wife, Shelley, hadn’t shown up at the nearby Pentagon daycare to check their two young kids in the immediate aftermath, and he knew her absence meant she was probably hurt or worse.

Marshall was right. His wife had been killed and her body was never found. Marshall told me years later how he regretted not giving Shelley a kiss goodbye that day because he didn’t want lipstick on his face. Later, when he retrieved her car from the Pentagon lot, her coffee cup was in it, stained with a lipstick imprint of her mouth.

He missed that kiss, but he still has the cup.

Jamie McIntyre – Senior Writer, Defense & National Security

I was in CNN’s Military Affairs Office with an office on the Pentagon’s outer E ring. I was sitting at my desk, working sources about the attacks in New York, when I began to get instant messages on my computer asking if I was okay. I was confused. The attack was in New York, why wouldn’t I be okay?

The Pentagon is so big, I didn’t feel the impact when the plane hit at 9:37 a.m.

I quickly rushed to the scene and returned to my office to file a report on CNN. The anchor in New York, Aaron Brown, had to stop me in mid-sentence. As he turned around and looked over his shoulder the south tower of the World Trade center was no longer visible. It had collapsed, and all was left was a cloud of dust.

I spent the day at the gas station across the street reporting on the day, fully aware that it was probably the most significant story I would ever cover in my journalism career. I knew my life would change dramatically. The summer had been slow, the news dominated by reports of shark attacks and the search for missing intern Chandra Levy. Now it was clear the United States would be at war, and my job as Pentagon reporter would require long days for months on end.

David Brown – Senior Editor

I was a reporter at Navy Times and saw the attacks on TV from our office in Springfield, Va. As soon as the Pentagon was hit, all the editors from the military publications stood on their desks and called out reporters’ names to see who was in the office and who may have been in the Pentagon, since we were there all the time.

I grabbed a notebook and a reporter friend drove me as close to the Pentagon as he could, but by that time they had roadblocks in place. After he dropped me off in Arlington I jogged maybe a mile to the Citgo gas station between the Pentagon and the Navy Annex. The Pentagon’s spokeswoman, Torie Clarke, was updating reporters from there and made statements throughout the day as the Pentagon burned and the wall collapsed just over her shoulder.

In the late afternoon, the reporters on scene boarded buses and were driven toward the building. There were large crowds along the side of the road and I can only imagine who they thought were in those buses. We were led into the Pentagon and waved through by heavily armed guards into the briefing room. The building was still burning but we were far enough from the damage that it was relatively safe. You could see smoke in the corridors and some box fans had been set up. I sat in the fourth row while we were briefed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin, Sen. John Warner, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton and Secretary of the Army Thomas White.

When it was over, I phoned in my quotes and asked an editor to come get me (I had no way of getting home). When he picked me up in Crystal City, I peppered him with questions since I hadn’t seen the news for most of the day. I asked him if we were at war and he said he didn’t know. Everything was shock and confusion.

Anna Giaritelli – Breaking News Reporter

I was in seventh grade at a school just outside Queens on Long Island. From mid-morning through the rest of the school day, there were near-constant sirens outside. All day long, kids were pulled out of school by parents or family friends. I remember them telling us what happened at the end of the day. By then there were only a few kids left at school, including me. My dad was a pastor so he was occupied with countless people in the church congregation who worked at the Towers.

But what has stuck with me, growing up in New York, was a year after the attacks, there were still missing person signs on neighbors’ lawns and in public places. Even after all that time, you still saw a city in disbelief and holding out that the missing were still trying to find their way home.

Timothy Carney – Senior Political Columnist

I was walking to work, across Capitol Hill, and it was one of the most beautiful days I ever experienced in Washington, D.C. Perfect weather, perfect blue sky. As I crossed the Capitol grounds, a Capitol policeman walked up to a groundskeeper right in front of me and said, “Did you hear what happened in New York?”

I heard the story and rushed to the office (I worked at Human Events then). By the time I got to the office, there were reports of the Pentagon plane. Soon, CNN was reporting smoke rising from the Capitol. I ran to a window and realized that what someone at CNN saw was the emissions from the Capitol Hill power plant in southeast Washington (right by my house).

People forget this, but it was a few hours between the plane strikes and the tower collapsing. I remember watching the first tower collapse on cable—I think it happened behind the reporter, and he thought it was “another explosion.”

That night, I was on the east front of the Capitol—exactly where I had learned about it—to cover a press conference after which hundreds of congressmen sang “God Bless America” on the steps. The entire time, we heard fighter jets overhead and I was still nervous I would see a hijacked 747 coming down East Capitol Street at the rotunda.

Paul Bedard – Senior Columnist

I was wrapping up a Christian Science Monitor breakfast two blocks from the White House with Democratic strategist James Carville. He looked at his phone and saw that some plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Walking back to U.S. News & World Report, where I wrote the Washington Whispers column, I began to notice an increased police presence.

Minutes back in the office, American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. I took it as a signal, got my truck and drove home to Loudoun County. As I crossed the Key Bridge in Georgetown, the smoke billowing out of the Pentagon was visible.

Along the way, several official cars passed as they took lawmakers to hideouts like Mount Weather on the Clarke-Loudoun County line adjacent to the Appalachian Trail.

Simply out of curiosity, I decided to drive to Mount Weather, expecting to be blocked. Nope. The Clarke and Loudoun deputy sheriffs let me though after I identified myself. I drove right up to the gate before being turned away by armed guards. As I turned around, a long line of police motorcycles also left the FEMA facility, presumably having delivered a top House or Senate official there earlier.

My next choice was a drive to Camp David, near a couple of trout streams I fish. The police were a little tougher there, blocking me about a mile away.

That night was spooky. We live near the Dulles International Airport flight path and there wasn’t a blinking red or white jet or helicopter light in the sky — a sad reminder of all those who died that day, and along with it, the freedom from terrorism America once felt.

Byron York – Chief Political Correspondent

I was at home working on a piece for National Review. I wasn’t connected to anything, and I learned about the attack when I called a friend in London whose secretary remarked drily, “It appears a plane has crashed into your World Trade Center.”

In the late morning, I drove my wife to work at NewsHour. We could see smoke rising from the Pentagon as we proceeded to get stuck in an epic traffic jam of people trying to get out of Washington. It resembled a 1950s science-fiction movie in which everyone is trying to escape the aliens.

I got back home and a friend called to tell me that another friend, Barbara Olson, had been on the plane that struck the Pentagon. Not long later, I walked out of my house to find a neighbor sitting quietly on his front steps with an otherworldly thousand-yard stare. His wife, it turned out, had also been on the plane.

Susan Crabtree – White House Correspondent

I was walking into work at Roll Call, just one block from the Capitol, when one of our photographers bolted out of the elevator doors, blurted out that a plane had hit the twin towers, and then rushed out the door. Cynical young reporter as I was, I assumed it was a small Cessna and proceeded to go upstairs, where TVs in the newsroom showed the second plane hitting the towers. I went white.

Our editor immediately told everyone in the newsroom to move away from a wall of glass windows, as we didn’t know what to expect — another blast, chemical weapons in the metros and the streets?

He ordered all of us to remain at our desks, as we didn’t have a newspaper the next day (Roll Call only published two or three times a week then). I frantically called other reporters on their cells to try to tell them not to go up to Capitol Hill as we watched reports that another plane was headed there and we heard blasts on Capitol Hill (we later learned they were military jets breaking the sound barrier while being scrambled to respond to the hijacked plane in Pennsylvania). Cell phones were jammed so I couldn’t get through to my reporter colleagues, and we could hear the roar of ambulances in the streets amid false reports of bombings at the State Department via CNN.

The more interesting, humorous part of the story came the next day, when I was in the periodical press gallery on the third floor of the Capitol, going about my business, a little on edge. An equally jittery police officer soon told me to “get the (expletive) out of the building” because they had discovered a suspicious package.

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I raced down the nearest steps and onto the east lawn (there was no visitors center at the time). When I got outside, I realized I was the very first person to leave the building, the only person on the large empty lawn. Pretty soon, however, Speaker Dennis Hastert (yes, that guy) showed up on the lawn with his entourage. The next people out of the building were the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. I was in good company, and thankfully it was a false alarm — one of many in the first weeks and months after the attacks that had everyone jumpy, to say the least.

Sean Higgins – Senior Writer

I was working for Investor’s Business Daily at the time. I remember walking into the office and wondering what everyone was watching in the break room. I walked in just in time to see the second tower collapse. It took me a few moments to comprehend what was happening. I remember asking, “Wait, is this live?”

There was all sorts of news and rumors flying around that day about other attacks in Washington, D.C. I later learned that my family, knowing I was downtown, was frantically trying to reach me throughout the day.

I decided to go to the Capitol Building to see if maybe somebody had better information and to see if I could find something to write about. While I was there security evacuated the building and so a lot of the lawmakers were milling around in front. At some point, the lawmakers assembled on the steps for what was, I think, supposed to be a moment of silence. Somebody started singing “God Bless America” and the rest all joined in. It’s one of the few true moments of unity I have witnessed on Capitol Hill.

Joana Suleiman – Production Editor

I was in my senior year at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I was driving to class listening to Elliot In The Morning on DC101 when the first tower was hit. As it became clearer we were under attack and the Pentagon had been hit, I called my mother (a photojournalist for the Virginia Journal, which in 2005 became The Washington Examiner). She was trying to leave the city and was stuck due to all the roadblocks so she abandoned her car and started walking and taking photos — some incredible shots came from that day.

Classes were canceled when I arrived at school. At the time, I had my first journalism internship with the Beacon in Silver Spring, Md. I called them to see if there was anything I could do. They assigned me to shadow a Red Cross team that was headed to the Pentagon and I spent the entire week with them. Been in a newsroom ever since.

John Siciliano – Energy and Environment Correspondent

I was working in Washington, D.C., for a foreign wire service, watching the live footage of one of the towers burning. CNN said it appeared to be a tragic accident. Then the other plane hit, and I remember blurting out, “It’s an attack.”

My managing editor, filing a story about the alleged “accident,” started berating me like I was crazy. “It’s not an accident, a second plane hit the towers,” I said.

“You missed it! Another plane hit the other tower. That can’t be an accident!”

The editor kept looking at me like I was crazy.

Somebody finally came in where we were arguing and confirmed it was no accident. The AP started putting out news about a car bombing at the State Department and that the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was actually shot down. Both were incorrect.

Washington Post actually put out a Sept. 11 afternoon edition that it was circulating with newspaper boys, the first and only time I ever saw them do that. The original front page had led with the Chandra Levy scandal.

I lived on Thomas Circle and downtown was under curfew for a week after the attacks. Humvees were parked with National Guard on the street corners. I remember being awakened by military helicopters doing patrols every night at 3 a.m. for a month. And there was not a plane in the sky.

Jeremy Lott – Night Editor

The first time I saw news of the Sept. 11 attacks on my computer, I wondered why AOL was doing a retrospective of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That semester I lived at my parents’ house in Lynden, Wash., from which I commuted to college over the border in Canada, then a relatively easy thing to do.

After glancing at the computer screen, I groggily descended to the kitchen from the Fonzie-esque apartment over the garage. Mom asked if I heard about the World Trade Center thing.

“Yeah, but why are they bringing that up now?” I said.

“Look,” she said, drawing my attention to the television with the planes and the burning and the collapsing towers.

“Oh.”

Getting into Canada on Sept. 11 was a breeze. The guard just waved me through. Coming back a few days later was harder. Lines were hours long because they were giving every car the once-over, at least. When it was my Pontiac Sunbird’s turn, the American border agent said to pop the trunk.

“It doesn’t pop,” I explained, handing him the keys.

There was a gap between the car and the trunk door where I could see him rooting around in the rearview mirror. It was slightly nerve wracking because there was a lot of stuff in the trunk: papers, junk, knick knacks, books. Nothing illegal but it might draw a secondary inspection flag and they were tearing some cars apart that day.

Through the gap, I saw him hold up one particular book for study. It was “Terrorism: How the West Can Win,” an essay collection edited by Benjamin Netanyahu that – honest! — I just happened to have knocking around back there.

He eventually set the book down, shut the trunk, returned the keys and waved me back into a different America than the one I had left.

Sean Langille – Digital Engagement Editor

During my high school years, I worked for WNBP, a local radio station in Newburyport, Mass. Sept. 11 was a Tuesday and also a primary election, which meant after I got out of school I was supposed to get ready to report on the election results. While I was sitting in my sophomore algebra class, a note was slipped under the door around 9:00 AM. The teacher informed the class a plane struck the World Trade Center in New York City. That was all we knew. There was no mention of a terrorist organization run by a nefarious figure named Osama bin Laden. My only knowledge of him or al Qaeda was in connection to the bombings of the U.S.S. Cole and an embassy in Kenya. The notion of an attack on American soil seemed outside of the realm of plausibility for me.

When class dismissed, I immediately called my program director at WNBP who informed me the towers had collapsed and another plane had struck the Pentagon. He told me to immediately head to city hall after school and get as much reaction as possible. During lunch, I went to the library and looked at the images on the computer screen with a sense of surrealism. This was the first time I was thrown into covering breaking news. It was exciting, yet terrifying, to report with uncertainty the events that were unfolding across the country.

Weeks later, I volunteered at an after-school program and taught a group of children time-sequencing. They were to draw their morning, afternoon, and evening activities. I noticed one boy had the same floating figure in the corner of each of his drawings. When I asked the young boy to tell me about the figure, he replied, “That’s my daddy, he’s with me wherever I go.” I later learned this boy’s father had died on Flight 93 [the flight that crashed in Shanksville, Pa.]. Every year around Sept. 11, I often think about him and how his world, and the lives of all Americans, were dramatically changed that day.

David Drucker – Senior Congressional Correspondent

I wouldn’t begin my first job as a journalist for another two months, but still usually began every morning before trudging to my normal job by flipping on CNN to get a jump on the day’s news.

But on Sept. 11, 2001, I decided for some reason to skip my morning ritual and get out the door quicker than usual to beat the Los Angeles traffic that usually accompanied my drive downtown. I was half-way out the door when my best friend and roommate called from his girlfriend’s apartment, where he’d spent the night, to tell me to turn on the television.

That’s when I saw only one Twin Tower standing where once there were two, and where soon enough I saw the next Tower collapse into rubble. It was around this time that I realized I should check in with my sister, who was living in Manhattan, and my parents, who just happened to be there as well on a business trip.

I eventually got through to them, but not before getting a little nervous about it and screaming at a shipping clerk at my office when he didn’t give me the answer I wanted to a certain question. I just remember staring at the television, gluing my ear to talk radio, and reading every print story I could, for practically weeks.

The whole thing felt surreal.

On Nov. 11, 2001, I began my first job as a reporter at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Ontario, Calif. Some weeks later, President George W. Bush decided to hold his first post-9/11 town hall-style event in Ontario, giving me my first taste of national politics.

A year later, when I was assigned to write a retrospective of Sept. 11 from the point of view of members of congress who represented the Inland Empire. I remember a few of them showing off these new hand-held communications devices called Blackberries, which they’d been issued in the months after the attacks.

That was the first time I’d ever seen, or heard of, a Blackberry.

W. James Antle III – Politics Editor

I was working in the information technology department of a marketing company in Boston. I was in my office when it was reported that the first plane hit. We pulled a television into the office and watched the footage. We initially thought it was a freak accident.

Then came news of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center, then the Pentagon attack. That was followed by erroneous reports of a car blowing up outside the State Department.

We then knew it was no accident. The flights that hit the World Trade Center originated in Boston, so we evacuated. We poured into commuter trains into the suburbs. I remember watching my mother drive down the street in tears.

Our company was based out of Prudential Tower, one of Boston’s tallest buildings. We faced bomb threats and evacuations for days.

On television on the day of the attacks, I watched them play the Star Spangled Banner outside Buckingham Palace. It never meant more to me.

Cathy Gainor – Policy Editor

I was the business editor at The Washington Times at the time. Before work, I went swimming. I was in the locker room about to take my shower when I heard a woman say that an airplane had hit one of the Twin Towers. That’s all I needed to hear. I took the fastest shower in my life, ripped a sweater getting dressed, and then sped down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in my car, driving at least 80, probably more, figuring there was no way the police were going to pull me over. Listening to WTOP on my way in, there were many false reports about fires and bombs on the National Mall, at the Capitol, at the State Department.

When I got to the Times building, the newsroom was already hard at work on an extra edition. And then we began work on the actual newspaper, with the entire paper devoted to the attacks. To make a crazy, stressful day even worse, we were in the middle of a switch to a new computer system, and the business desk was supposed to switch and join everybody else on Sept. 12. We had to move to the new system right then, which is never easy, in the middle of the biggest news day of our lives.

I was working until about 1 a.m. And while the TVs were on all day and we were engulfed in the news all day, the gravity of what had happened didn’t truly sink in until I got home around 2 a.m. and turned the TV on again.

Daniel Allott – Deputy Commentary Editor

I was in Madison, Wis., and driving to a campus gym that morning. I heard on the radio about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, but at that point, there wasn’t any talk of a terrorist attack. The talk show I was listening to went back to the normal topics of the day. By the time I was done working out and back in the car, the second plane had hit the south tower.

The reality of the attacks didn’t fully hit home until the next fall when I moved to Washington, D.C. for graduate school. One of the professors in my program wouldn’t be teaching because she had perished in the attack on the Pentagon.

Hugo Gurdon – Editorial Director

I was driving to the Toronto offices of the National Post, where I worked as managing editor. The drive-time radio host in those days was a Vietnam War draft dodger. As he was wrapping up he said he was looking at amazing pictures of one of the World Trade Center towers with smoke pouring from an upper floor. He said there were reports that a small private plane had hit the building.

I got to work and sat at the news desk. A few reporters and editors were watching the smoking tower on TV. Suddenly there was a mixed cry and gasp as they all saw the second plane hit. At that point, we knew it was not some small, freak, one-off accident, but an attack. Everyone sprang into action. The rest of the day is a blur, except my recollection of a staff member coming to the door of the news conference room, where senior editors were discussing coverage, to tell us that one of the towers collapsed. Not long afterward he came back, ashen, to say the second tower also collapsed.

Jacqueline Klimas – Defense Correspondent

I was walking into earth science class in eighth grade when I saw the towers on fire on TV, thinking it was a movie. We all watched in silence as both towers fell. My English and history teachers wouldn’t let us watch the news because we were too young and tried to hold class as normal, but others let us see how the day unfolded.

My mom left work early to meet me when I got off the bus. I remember being so scared that I slept on the floor of my parents’ room for a few nights immediately following the attacks. It was a strange age to be for something so significant: I was old enough to understand what had happened but too young to actually do anything about it.

I still have the copy of Time magazine that came out the following week with the black border and photo of the World Trade Center burning.

Hoai-Tran Bui – Web Producer

I remember my fourth-grade teacher suddenly rushing out of the classroom without a word, leaving me and my classmates to sit and wonder what was going on.

After a few minutes of speaking in urgent whispers with other teachers just outside our class, my teacher walked back in and gravely announced that a plane had struck the Twin Towers. Thinking back, it was pretty bold for a teacher to tell a bunch of 9-year-olds that, but I went to school in northern Virginia, barely 30 minutes outside of Washington, D.C. Our classroom was suddenly in an uproar. Where’s the Twin Towers again? What’s going on? Is school out early?

And then my teacher did another thing that shocks me today. She booted up the one computer we had in our class and looked up articles while the rest of us tried to peek over her shoulder. I remember briefly seeing a pixelated picture of a man falling out of a tower before my teacher immediately shut off the computer and shooed us away.

The rest of the day was spent in a daze as my fellow classmates wondered aloud if it was an accident and my teacher tried to shepherd us back to our seats. The next thing I remember was my dad picking me from school early and the sky being a light, light blue.

Joshua Axelrod – Web Producer/Copy Editor

I was in fourth grade, and therefore had no idea what was really happening. The first sign that something abnormal was going on was my teacher desperately trying to get the ancient TV in our classroom to show the news. As little snots, we kept asking him why he was allowed to watch TV in class and we weren’t, to which he rightfully told us to shut up.

The second sign was all the kids randomly being called to the principal’s office because their parents were there to pick them up. I grew up in Pittsburgh, not all that far from where one plane went down in Somerset, so in retrospect that makes a lot more sense.

When I got home, my dad sat me down, told me what had happened and insisted it wasn’t going to affect our daily lives. So I went to soccer practice after school as usual, but it was the emptiest practice we ever had.

Joseph Lawler – Economics Writer

We were just starting the second class of the first day of school, in Massachusetts. My best friend had been excused and heard the news while out in the hallway. He returned and passed along what he’d heard, but it was garbled – we thought that terrorists had flown remote-control planes into the Pentagon, causing minimal damage. We joked about how lame they were.

As the day went on, teachers gave us a better sense of how serious the attacks really were. When the school day ended, I went up to the principal’s office, where he had the TV on, and saw the first images I’d seen of Manhattan. A number of us watched in silence. Even then, we kids weren’t prepared to take it seriously, and wouldn’t fully grasp what had happened until a long time later.

Ashe Schow – Commentary Writer

I was just a high school freshman in Orlando, Fla. It was announced over the loudspeakers at the end of biology class. I went to my next class, veterinary sciences, and my teacher had a TV set up playing the news. All we did that class was watch the news and the destruction. Rumors started swirling after the Pentagon was hit that other U.S. landmarks could be next. We were worried Disney World would be hit.

My closest connection to the disaster was the fact that my father took business trips to the part of the Pentagon that was destroyed, but he wasn’t on a trip that day.

When it was first announced, I don’t remember being affected. I didn’t know much about the World Trade Center and I was so far away it didn’t seem real. But when I saw the destruction – and the people jumping out of buildings – I was horrified.

Mariana Barillas – General News Reporter

It was sometime in the early afternoon when I was in fifth grade. My teacher, with a distressed look on her face, announced to the class that one of the students who had arrived late to school had something to tell us. I remember him saying that a major football game had been canceled because some buildings had fallen down. Needless to say, I was confused.

After arriving at my grandparents’ house like I did every day after school, I saw my grandmother comforting my distraught mother. I asked what was going on and my grandmother told me to go into the other room with my grandfather to watch the news. Seeing all the footage of the Twin Towers collapsing and later being told that my parents feared one of their very close friends had been working in one of the buildings, suddenly everything I had experienced earlier made sense.

They later found out he was not in the office that day. Either that evening or the next, I recall my father saying, “We’re at war.”

Madeleine Morgenstern – Digital Editor

I was a seventh-grader in California, so the attacks had already taken place by the time I woke up. My parents had the TV on initially, but turned it off as my brothers and I were getting ready for school. I didn’t know what had happened, only that my mom told my dad “be careful” as he headed for work in downtown Los Angeles. She told me a plane had crashed into a building in New York; I didn’t learn more until I was in school.

One of my teachers said she didn’t want to hear anybody making comments or blaming anyone they thought might be responsible. I didn’t understand until later she was talking about Muslim students.

Kyle Feldscher – Energy and Environment Correspondent

I was in eighth grade in Canton, Mich. I remember the day being beautiful, which everybody says they remember, and that morning being full of vague rumors that something was happening. I don’t remember anyone telling me what was going on, no teachers showing us the news coverage, just this vague feeling that something was happening outside the building and we didn’t know.

We generally went outside onto the school grounds following lunch for an abbreviated recess, but I remember the principal telling us we were going to stay inside that day because it looked like it was going to rain. It seemed absurd in retrospect to lie about something like that, but I came from a relatively sheltered upper-middle class city, so it wasn’t surprising even if it was a stupid lie.

At the end of the day, the principal came on the PA and told us the Twin Towers and the Pentagon had been attacked. He said no one knew who did this or why. I don’t remember a lot of what else he said, but I remember going home thinking the nation was at war. I remember thinking Iraq and Saddam Hussein were obviously behind it.

And then, I went home and watched the news, watched other buildings fall and remembered refusing to change the channel when my cousin asked me to because “This is history!”

Jason Russell – Commentary Writer

I was in fifth grade in suburban Detroit. On Tuesdays, we got to have an extra recess in the morning. It was hot that day, at least for Michigan. When we lined up after recess, the police officer who led the D.A.R.E. program told us the World Trade Center had been attacked.

My family had visited New York City within the past couple years. I vaguely remembered (perhaps inaccurately) my oldest brother wanting to visit the buildings but getting turned away due to some type of threat. On Sept. 11, I recalled this and somehow decided whatever attack they were telling us about wasn’t a big deal.

I rode the bus home like usual, and when I got there my oldest brother had the news on. That was the first time I watched footage of the attacks. Once I knew the buildings were gone forever, I realized this was more important than I’d thought.

Later that year, I remember one of the younger kids in Chess Club built two towers out of crackers and then crashed into them. My friend scolded him and said it wasn’t something to joke about or play with.

I certainly didn’t fully grasp the gravity of what happened. I don’t think anyone who was that young and removed from the situation ever will.

Ben Smith – Social Media Producer

I was in my fourth grade English class with my teacher, Mrs. Sparks, in Statesville, N.C. We had just finished reading a chapter of a group book with everyone taking turns reading out loud. My bus driver, Mrs. Woods, came running into our room crying and, without saying a word, turned on the TV. We all sat in silence as we saw the first tower ablaze. We then watched as the second plane hit. Our teacher then gave us a worksheet and sat silently watching TV the rest of class. After finishing the worksheet, I looked up to see the first tower fall. The second one fell as we left to switch classes. During the class switch, I heard teachers whispering about the Pentagon as well.

As the day went on, students began to be called out of class, as parents had come to pick them up. The school district sent out a robocall telling parents that, if they felt like it, they could come pick up their kids. All of the teachers were very quiet that day. When I got dropped off back at home, my mother was sitting quietly in the living room glued to the TV. The teachers decided not to assign homework that night, so I spent the next several hours quietly watching the footage with my entire family.

Al Weaver – Campaign Reporter

I was in fifth grade at St. Theresa’s School in New Cumberland, Pa. We watched what happened on TV for the next hour or so before my mom came to pick my brother, sister and I up. I honestly had no idea what the World Trade Centers were at the time, and it only hit me what happened when my parents referred to them as the Twin Towers. I had been to New York only a month prior with my dad and brother for a baseball trip to Shea Stadium, and I distinctly remember seeing those two towers as our Amtrak train left New York for Harrisburg, Pa.

Later that day, probably around dinner time, I remember telling my mom that I just wished the news (even SportsCenter, my show of choice) would talk about something else, anything else. She responded by telling me that what happened wouldn’t be going away anytime soon. She was right. Fifteen years later, here we are still talking about it and its repercussions.

David Lindsey – Chief Digital Officer, MediaDC

I was a sophomore at the University of Central Florida in Orlando in 2001. I was getting ready to go to class that morning when I saw a headline on the Yahoo.com home page about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I didn’t read the story, I figured it must have been a small plane, or maybe it just clipped the tower, or it would have been a bigger story. I remember sitting in my car listening to NPR, staring at the radio like you see in pictures from the Great Depression.

I didn’t want to leave because I didn’t want to miss what was going on, but I also knew I was going to be late to class, so I ran to class to see if they would have the news on there. The whole campus was dead silent. Everyone looked like they were in shock, and no one talked above a whisper. On my way through the building to class, all the TVs in the common areas were on, showing the towers in flames. Only a few people showed up to class, and everyone was quiet except for a few people crying. I heard one girl say that someone in her family worked in one of the towers and they hadn’t been able to get a hold of her yet. No one, including our professor, really knew what to do. He thought we’d still have class since he hadn’t heard otherwise, but he would let anyone go who wanted to. Someone eventually ran in to say that one of the towers had collapsed, and we all ran out of class to watch on TV, and we could see the footage of the dust pouring out over Manhattan, people jumping from the second tower, etc. A few people were already yelling about going to get whoever had done this, “We’re gonna f—- them up!”

After about 10 minutes, an announcement came that there were reports of more planes in the air that had been hijacked, and no one knew where they were going, so the entire college was going to be evacuated. At that time it was about 40,000 students, all trying to leave campus at the same time. I didn’t live very far away, but it took me about 1.5 hours to go 5 miles. It was the worst traffic jam I’ve ever seen in my life. I had the radio on the whole time, and heard all of the reports as they came in about the second tower coming down, and the crashes at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Penn. When I finally got back to my apartment, I sat and watched the news all day, as Manhattan was evacuated, the rescue operations started and they started talking about Osama bin Laden.

Class was canceled for the rest of the day, and the following day. Some people didn’t come back until the following week. When we all came back to class, the tone had changed for the rest of the semester. I’ve heard people talk about living through the Kennedy assassination, how there was a feeling of innocence lost that day, and I never really knew what that meant until I went through the same thing on Sept. 11.