One Moment, Please… 9/11: 25 Years Later

By Jason Sethre As we approach the 25 year anniversary of September 11, 2001 (9/11), it's still fresh in my memory. And, I'm sure I'm not alone. On that Tuesday morning, while working for The Daily Journal newspaper south of Chicago, I was traveling from our office in Bourbonnais to the main newspaper headquarters in Kankakee. I was listening to the radio when I heard an interruption in the music. The North Tower of the World Trade Center had been struck by a passenger plane (American Airlines Flight 11) at 8:46 am. I was initially thinking either there was an issue with the pilot or the aircraft. By the time I arrived at the office in Kankakee, the second passenger plane (United Airlines Flight 175) crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. I walked into the newsroom of the daily newspaper and saw a crowd of reporters gathered around a television. Nobody was speaking. Everyone was listening to TV news anchors reporting on the events as they unravelled. By 10:28 am, both World Trade Center towers had collapsed. Our world had just changed in less than two hours. It almost didn't even feel real. It felt like 'The War of the Worlds' Orson Welles moment. The days that followed kept us glued to the news. We needed to learn what happened. A total of 19 hijackers claimed the lives of 2,977 victims on 9/11. For me, this was comparable to when JFK was assassinated. I wasn't alive in 1963, so I can only imagine what it felt like when that happened. I only have a few points of comparison, like when we watched the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster live on TV on January 28, 1986. I was 12 years old. Another horrific memory relates to the Oklahoma City Bombing on April 19, 1995. I was working at the Post Bulletin in Rochester, Minn., just 21 years old at the time. In 2002, almost one year after 9/11, I attended the American Press Institute in Virginia alongside the newspaper editor of The Daily Journal. We were close enough to D.C., that we spent quite a bit of time exploring historic sites. There were probably 40 newspaper executives from around the United States in attendance. When we walked into the Freedom Forum located in D.C., which is dedicated to fostering First Amendment rights for all, I'll never forget what I saw on display. At the Freedom Forum, they took all forms of media-covered events that had an impact on our lives and put them on display. There was one picture of a person falling from the high-rise building that will forever be stained in my brain. It was a picture that was on the front page of many newspapers the day after the 9/11 attack. It was a picture that told a story, and I could only imagine the decisions that person was forced to make in such a moment of peril. I know my 9/11 story of where I was at, how I felt and what was on mind at the time is not unique. All of us who were alive at that time will never forget. And, this is why we should always be grateful for the men and women who serve in our military or as first responders. It's not just about courage. They've seen things they can't unsee and they will carry that with them for a lifetime.