The morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 started out to be a warm late summer day and as a reporter for the Connection Newspapers, it was a deadline day. The newspaper had a full staff and we put out weekly newspapers for several communities across Fairfax County as well as Alexandria, Arlington and Potomac, MD. Our office was out in Tysons Corner, which it was known as back then, in a one-story building on land that is now Tysons II. As always, I had to hit Starbucks before jumping on I-495 to head out to the office.
I was in line behind three or four people when I heard about an airplane hitting the World Trade Center in New York City, so in my mind I pictured that famous shot of a B-25 hitting the Empire State Building back in the 1940’s or 1950’s, a picture I remembered seeing in a book somewhere before. An airplane hitting the World Trade Center? That’s a little weird, I thought.
I got my coffee, and there seemed to be a lot of chatter in the café, so I headed out to my car and off to work. I turned on the radio to my show, the Howard Stern Show, 106.7 FM. Now Howard Stern and his sidekick Robin Quivers broadcast from downtown New York City and when I pulled out of my parking spot in front of Starbucks, everyone at the station was watching the plane crashes unfold, and they reported on it to some extent, while the show producer Gary Dell’Abate freaked out and ran out of the studio. Stern would later give him a hard time for that.
I got to the newsroom and all was buzzing, particularly one woman was barking out commands. By that time, the Pentagon had been hit too, so my orders were to go back to the Springfield Metro Station and see what I could find. Surely people would be panicking, heading home to their loved ones and I had to get the story. Once back on I-495, there seemed to be less traffic so getting to the Metro station was easy. I parked in a temporary spot and immediately saw this woman panicking in the parking garage. “Where’s my car? Where’s my car?” she said deliriously as she wandered around in confusion.
I went down to the bus lanes and heard people saying the buses were cancelled, or the buses were only going away from the city, or something else, but I could tell they didn’t know anything for fact. I talked to whoever I could, including this one hippie woman who was sitting on the curb, holding some sign, possibly her destination sign so I started asking her questions and she started saying something to the effect that the United States deserved it, and had a few half-cocked reasons they asked for it.
After noting my observations and interviewing anyone I could, I headed back to the office only to be met by another reporter who was compiling all the information for our lead story. He hated my first version of the Springfield story, so I rewrote it and somehow got out of there while still contributing what I could. As a newsroom, we were happy to get out the local version of 9/11 in time for the printers, and all was turned down to a low simmer.
For the next few weeks we wrote about the impacts on a local level, but after doing this for about 10 stories, I was sick of it. I said to my direct editor, Stephen Mauren, “can we just go back to our regular stories of community events, school football teams, Boy Scout achievements, bla bla bla.” He laughed at the ridiculousness of my request, with a feeling like nothing was ever going to be the same in this country. Maybe not, I thought, but sure enough, when the Springfield Days festival went on the next spring, I was right there interviewing Miss Springfield like I had before, and life went on.