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Corey Deitz
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Many people have forgotten how they felt by lunchtime on
September 11, 2001 – if you even had an appetite after watching live TV
shots of your fellow citizens jumping to their deaths from the upper floors
of the Twin Towers to avoid being burned alive.
A lot of us saw those building come down. I was on-the-air when
reports of American Airlines Flight 11 reached our studio. All we knew
was some kind of plane had hit the World Trade Center; at the time we
couldn’t have imagined it was a commercial 767. We scrambled to find a
television and shortly after we did, I witnessed American Airlines Flight
175 hit the South Tower in real time.
Stunned.
There’s no other word for how I felt. My on-air partner and I had
to harness our emotions so as to not overly panic our listeners. We tossed
out our usually light-hearted format and went into intense talk and
information mode.
I guess you know the rest. Everything changed on that day.
America changed. My life changed. My children’s lives changed. Your
life changed. The way we live changed in large ways and small ones.
The joy of flying to visit relatives for Thanksgiving or for a
vacation in Hawaii suddenly became a hassle.
We feared white powder in our post offices, on Capitol Hill, and
even inside our own street-side mailboxes. Imagine: we feared walking to
the curb and retrieving our own mail.
We wondered if we could shop safely at the mall or was a suicide
bomber hiding nearby and harboring a plan to dash into The Gap, blow
himself up and take us out with him.
We stocked up on plastic, canned food, batteries, and emergency
kits in case – in case of – in case of something.
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