I post this on Facebook every year on 9/11. First time was in 2012:
Worse day in my radio life? 9/11/01. Had to come in and cover mornings and when the first plane hit realized there wasn't much you could do on a dance station without a network besides telling people to turn you off and turn on the tv. When the President spoke I held a mic up to the speaker on the studio tv. I always felt like I had failed in what was the first obligation of a broadcaster: serve the public.
Later as we were watching concrete barriers show up to block access to the John Hancock a couple blocks from our building the crazy GM came into the conference room where the few of us left in the building were watching coverage and said "this isn't that big of a deal. The salespeople should come back in and start selling."
I left and the streets were quiet. No one spoke on the El, not even the crazy people. When I got up to my neighborhood the silence from no planes in the air or cars on the road was deafening.
Our world and our role in it forever changed that day. We became a country on the defense always preparing for the next attack. We look at the rest of the world with suspicion now. That makes me sad.
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