For their sacrifice, suffering, we will never forget

A firefighter takes a knee during 9/11 response. (Courtesy photo)

As editor of the former Foster's Sunday Citizen, Tuesdays were a relatively quiet day.

After putting out the paper Saturday night, we on the staff were all off till Tuesday, so it was like a Monday for most workers.

So after coming in around 8 a.m. that September 11, 2001, I began by checking my emails and then looking at other Sunday papers to see what their big Sunday features had been.

Someone came by from the daily side (the room where the Foster's was put out) around 9 a.m. and remarked that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers, that there was some damage but the tower appeared to be OK.

I felt an impulse to scour the AP and other wires to see what happened, but had much to do as I began planning the next Sunday edition.

But a couple of minutes later everything changed. Someone came in from the daily side again and said another plane had crashed into the other tower and the news staff had all been summoned to the main newsroom.

At that time the daily Foster's was an afternoon paper, and its deadline to send pages was fast approaching.

An air of apprehension and angst filled the newsroom, with the uncertainty of so much in front of us.

As our eyes were glued to the lone newsroom TV hanging from a wall mount in the corner, we watched in horror as the South Tower collapsed at 9:59.

Thirty minutes later we watched as the North Tower also collapsed.

Soon after we heard of the Pentagon attack and the downing of another terrorist hijacked plane in Shanksville, Pa.

The images from TV, the hundreds of often-grisly images sent by the Associated Press, many of which were too objectionable to put in the paper and the constancy of notion that we all had to watch and read every news item and look at every image that was connected to these horrific attacks because this was our job, took its toll on everyone in the newsroom.

Of course it pales with the horror that the people who worked in the Twin Towers, at the Pentagon, who boarded those flights to go home or go to work or visit people they love, the firefighters and police and everyone else had to endure.

For them, take a moment today at 8:46 a.m., the time of the first attack, or whenever you read this, and remember their agony and the nearly 3,000 who died.

We shall never forget.

- HT