I've been struggling for more than a day with writing this. Before I start, I need to be clear about a couple of things: I'm doing this because it's needed context for another post I'll be writing concerning our 35th anniversary trip next week. Not because it was just the 25th anniversary. Also, many people had it much worse than me. I didn't lose family or friends, I wasn't in New York City; I was just a news guy covering the events of the day in Wichita, KS. That's a large part of why the story has stayed quiet for the past quarter-century.

A bit of career history

I had a 30-year radio career, six years at KFDI, which was at the time the radio station that owned the radio news image in Wichita. The award above is my solo National Edward R. Murrow award for a newscast I produced and anchored in 2002, when missionary Martin Burnham's body, accompanied by his wife Gracia, returned from the Philippines where they had been kidnapped and he was killed in a firefight between their captors and the Philippine Army.

September 11, 2001

KFDI had a history of winning National Murrows during the time I was there — we had a powerhouse reporting team, all of whom were strong anchors as well. Our News Director, Dan Dillon, was in Nashville that day to accept several National Murrows earned by the team and individuals. He anchored the morning drive (5:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.), and I was his fill-in.

8 a.m. News

The first plane hit the WTC during our live newscast. We had a TV next to the board, and I saw the ABC coverage when it first came on minutes later, as the closed-circuit message came over in my ear about what had happened. Like everyone at the time, I thought "accident," mentioned it, and moved on. If I recall correctly, ABC was going to do a break-in report about that around 8:15. But the second plane going into the tower on live TV changed everything. Now we were going from coordinating live coverage on two stations to our full-blown emergency takeover plan. I ran through the building, informing all six stations that we would be taking ABC live at 8:15 for continuous coverage, and they should plan to stay with it until further notice. At that time, in that level of importance, the news department had the authority to direct that without additional management approval (today, I'm not sure there's anyone in the building to make that happen).

8:30 a.m. News brief

I called our local emergency manager and had an impromptu discussion of what our plans were if something similar happened locally — particularly with our city and county government centers both being high rises and located across the street from each other.

9 a.m. News

Shortened because ABC was only giving 90-second breaks. I don't really remember the coverage then. It was too much of a blur. I think we were on the phone with someone from the airport talking about the closing of the airspace, but I don't honestly remember if we did local at the top of the hour.

Sometime after 9 a.m.

The Assistant News Director took over the coverage — at that point, we made the decision to stay wall to wall, even through the top and bottom breaks, only doing the 6-station legal ID at the top of the hour. I left the station and went to the airport. I remember already, how silent it was.

11:30 a.m.

At the time, our policy on ABC continuous coverage was to stay with it only until it became repetitive. That typically meant after we'd heard 3 or so 20-minute segments with no new information, we'd go back to regular programming. In a way, I can't fault the Assistant News Director for following that policy, but those who followed closely may remember that after the first 90 minutes we devolved into speculation because no new official statements were coming out — and they didn't until early afternoon. I later learned from my involvement in Emergency Management that this is really pretty typical. There's a period from about 90 minutes until around 6 hours into a truly major event that doing the work of getting the thing under control just has to take priority, and investigation takes somewhat of a back seat along with public information.

So I understand the Assistant News Director's decision at the time...it was within policy and things had truly become repetitive. But I'll always believe that in that moment, it was wrong.

Being bluntly honest here, I have to admit some of that may be colored by what I'm about to relate next. I don't know. But after the event I'm about to relate, tuning around the dial and hearing us being the only stations playing music just felt... wrong.

I can still visualize this and am tearing up at the thought. I was driving past Wichita Fire Station 3, about a mile from the radio station, when we went back to music. And this song came on (the original version):

[embed url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrMftm6Km3g"]

The first notes rang out as I drew even with the station's flag, at half-mast.

I had to pull over and bawl.

I've worked other major stories, some that personally impacted me more closely. But this is the one and only time in my career that emotion overwhelmed me during coverage to the point I had to stop and cry. Usually, I could hold it together until I got home.

It was over a decade before "God Bless the USA" could appear unexpectedly and me not tear up. I remember being on the Showboat Branson Belle at Table Rock Lake in Branson some years later and it came up during the show. I wept, standing there on the balcony. That reaction has since dulled, but if I happen to be very tired or already emotional, I can still be tipped over the edge. Oddly, now the version of the song I linked above is part of my "re-centering" playlist. I guess because it reminds me, as bad as that moment and some in life since have been, others have had it worse, and more permanently. It also gives me a bit of hope that our country can step back from the abyss of division and find a degree of unity... though a large part of me thinks even a repeat of this or worse would just divide us more.