The morning was extraordinarily calm.
A perfect September day.
Around 7:30 a.m., I parked my car, marveled at the bright blue umbrella sky and headed through the newsroom door.
There was nothing to indicate the coming hours would bring horror and destruction, death and a terror that would stay with me forever.
The office was quiet. Reporters typically aren’t early birds.
I was downloading pictures in the photo lab when I heard the nearby police scanner crackle. “… a small plane might have hit the World Trade Center.”
I cringed. Didn’t that also happen years before?
Minutes later, a copy editor burst through the office doors. “Turn on the TV,” he cried.
NBC’s “Today Show” showed the Twin Towers on fire. Hosts Katie Couric and Matt Lauer were on the phone, talking with witnesses in Manhattan who were breathlessly describing how a jumbo jet had just flown into the second building.
Images of fire and glass and steel and thousands of bits of what looked like paper filled the screen. Smithereens.
My heart stopped.
The clock paused.
Then, after a beat, a mania descended.
Everyone was talking at once. Two planes. Two buildings. Fire. Smoke. Confusion.
Stunned colleagues began scurrying in from the parking lot.
Phones were ringing. People were gasping. People were hugging.
People were silent.
I called my husband. He was getting our youngest ready for school.
Are you watching TV?
“Dragon Tales,” he said.
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Change the channel, I said.
“Oh my God.”
I called the school. Was it canceled? No.
I called my older daughter’s middle school. Should I come get her? No.
I called my parents. “Stay home.”
I called my sister. She was crying.
Minutes later word came of another plane crashing into the Pentagon.
Was the whole country under attack?
By 11 a.m., we learned that three planes had crashed, and that possibly a fourth was MIA. A national groundstop had been ordered.
The panic was palpable.
An editor gathered our staff. We need to record the day — even in times of disaster, especially in times of disaster.
New York. Washington. Could Chicago be next?
He announced there would be a special section that afternoon.
We all needed to pitch in.
Reporters were dispatched to Loop locations.
People called local police. People called local fire departments.
People called their families.
No one knew the extent of the attacks. No one knew the number of casualties. No one knew anything definitive.
I took calls from field reporters and fed their information into larger stories.
I worked on autopilot.
All day we took calls, made calls and watched the news wires and TVs.
Our hearts broke for New York. Our hearts broke for D.C. Before long, our hearts would also break for Pennsylvania.
Stories began to emerge of grief-stricken family members, of the injured, of those searching for missing loved ones.
Victims included restaurant employees, business travelers, office workers, children. Some narrowly missed the carnage, others narrowly caught it.
Pundits speculated blame. And reprisals.
As the news coverage continued, we saw people crying, people running, buildings collapsing. We saw smoke and debris speed down streets, knock people down and run them over.
We saw people choose falling to death over burning alive.
Disbelief. Anxiety. Heartbreak.
We cried.
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But we also saw police and firefighters and EMTs everywhere, their uniforms drenched in sweat, their faces crusted in dust, their eyes beaming courage.
It was a juxtaposition of chaos and order, of loss and rescue, of terror and assurance.
In the afternoon, some of us walked over to the blood donation center. The line was out the door.
Later, as information came in and the day’s events were processed, we gathered at each other’s desks to wonder aloud what it all meant.
Meanwhile, the presses cranked.
The ink ran.
The special section — the first we had ever worked on — was hot off the press.
We had documented the day. We had worked as one. We had done our job.
And now, we had souvenirs.
But we would have easily traded them for it to be yesterday.
At home that evening, my husband and I exhaled. It was over, we thought, we hoped.
But, by morning, the reality began to sink in that the world had changed forever.
In the coming days, flags were hoisted and planes were grounded and, it seemed to me, people were just a little gentler, a tad more careful with each other.
We had shared a trauma. We had collective grief. And we were helping each other through it.
Years later, after everyone had returned to flying and printed collector newspaper sections no longer mattered, I would visit the 9/11 Memorial on another perfect September day.
I would read the names of the souls lost. I would listen to the stories of courage and survival, of hurts and heroes.
My heart would ache and my eyes would well.
I would wonder, once again, why it had to happen at all.
And I would sigh at the consequences. So much heartbreak. So much destruction. So many changes — wars, regime changes, TSA, Homeland Security, take off your shoes, remove your belt, PTSD, more suffering.
Structures can be rebuilt. Regimes can be overturned. Alliances can shift. Newspapers recycled. Life will go on.
But I would forever cling to the realization that everything is fragile.
Including, or especially, a perfect September day.
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years. She can be reached at [email protected].