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9/11 MEMORIES FROM THE INSIDE

R

reportasaurus

Hoosier broadcasters, what are your most vivid memories from 10 years ago tomorrow?

It was the longest day of the longest week of my broadcast journalism career. Then-Delaware County Sheriff Steve Aul was vacationing in Washington, DC that week, and had an appointment to visit a relative at the Pentagon the day of the attack. It took us hours to track him down, determine that he was safe (he was running late that day, and emerged from a train on the Metro to find the Pentagon on fire), and get that on the air.

How about the rest of you?
 
While recruiting, coaching and doing assistant athletic administration at Oakland City University, I kept the radio blood working by being the beat reporter for Clear Channel-Evansville (Townsquare, now owns the current cluster of what was CC-E), doing gov't. and school board meeetings... I would fill in about a day a month for the news director, Warren Korf and then would fill for sports (Dan Egerski), when Dan was on the road with USI basketball... Of all days, I had 9/11 to fill for Warren....Eric from the Classic Rock FM came in and said CNN just showed a plane going into one of the towers.. We all flipped the cable on in production and witnessed the second plane crashing in to the other tower... The Mayor and our Indiana Secretary of State were there to do the AM news/talk show... The mayor, who is a very calm and dry personality, sipped on his coffee and stated "Terrorism" when reacting to the second plane.. Within' minutes the Secretary of State got the call to get back to Indy, as fast as he could.. Ashcroft wanted all key States' Govs, Secretaries of State and States' Attorney Generals to be in their State Capitols, asap... Alert status, HIGH..... Never will forget the board op saying he could not get the feed to dub the Wall Street Journal Report... I told him the netword feed from one of the towers... They were no longer with us...
 
I actually had a job interview at a cluster of 7 stations that day. When I heard the World Trade Center was on fire, I initially didn't think it was that big of a deal. A listener who frequently joked with the hosts called in to report it, and I was sure he was exaggerating. Besides, the World Trade Center had been bombed at least once before and barely suffered even minimal damage. So, we probably just had a minor electrical fire or, at worst, a bomb that would end up doing about what the previous ones had done.

I had also started taking classes at the local university a few weeks earlier, and I simply continued on with getting ready for my interview and prepared for my 9:30 class. Since I had the interview, I didn't turn on the radio on the way to work. I just kept going through what I was going to say and how I was going to answer the questions. What happened didn't really hit me until I was driving home from class and finally decided to turn on the radio. That was when I heard the reporter announce that one of the towers was collapsing.
 
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