Seven Years Ago

Seven years ago today, I was walking from the news studio to the main broadcast studio to update the PSA file or check the log or make sure the radio signal wasn't fading, just another day at the radio station, when I looked up at the television monitor. Smoke was pouring out of one side of one 100+ story tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Unbelievable! Most network commentators were saying that a small plane must have drifted off the flight path and collided with the big building. No one was suggesting that a huge jet airliner would have caused the damage. At that moment, the damage looked minimal, one small fire on the side of a huge building. The coverage continued. And then television images showed the second plane slamming into the second tower. And the world changed.

Those images will stay with me for the rest of my life, like the mental pictures from South Vietnam, like the Challenger exploding in mid-air, indelibly seared on my brain. Take a second at 8:46am and remember.