9-11's Other Memorial

NBC's Ann Curry before the attacks

So traumatic were the events of 9-11 that 17 years passed before I could bring myself to search Youtube and rewatch the footage of the attacks unfolding live on morning television shows.  What struck me about these videos was how calm and normal that terrible day began.

It was a perfectly sunny late summer morning and some newscasters commented on this fact.  CBS's Mark McEwen noted the “miles and miles” of sunshine on the weather map and said it was as nice as it could be across the northeast.  However, in a bit of eerie foreshadowing, he closed the segment by remarking, “It's kind of quiet around the country.  We like quiet.  Unless it's quiet.  It's too quiet.”  Standing with the adoring crowd of people outside Rockefeller Center, NBC's Katie Couric said, “It is such a pretty morning isn't it?”  Al Roker replied, “It is a perfect fall morning...although it's not fall yet so it's still a perfect summer morning.”

The news reported a U.S. drone shot down by Iraq.  The Miss America Pageant was now going to quiz contestants on history and current events with some participants not knowing what happened on Dec. 7, 1941 during a trial run of the questions.  Ads for Nightline had Ted Kopel pitching a week-long report on the ongoing conflict in the Congo commenting that it was a story we should have brought you long ago.  

Just before the attacks, The Early Show host Bryant Gumbel was doing a cooking segment with the executive food editor of Gourmet Magazine in celebration of the publication's 60th anniversary.  Fox News was interviewing singer Babyface and asked about his new hair style.  Katie Couric had just wrapped up an interview with Harry Belafonte and Matt Lauer began speaking with Richard Hack about his new book on Howard Hughes.  The author was enjoying a brief moment in the sun when the segment had to be cut short because of a “breaking story” at the World Trade Center.  Live footage of the buildings wouldn't load so Matt Lauer broke for a commercial as did many other stations at that time.

When the major networks came back, they aired special reports with the now too familiar footage of black smoke billowing out of the North Tower.  Hindsight allows us to dismiss any naive speculation that it might have been an accident.  When Flight 175 hit the South Tower on live TV, Bryant Gumbel couldn't see the footage but a witness he was talking to over the phone was shocked and described the crash as deliberate.  The Early Show host seemed to be in denial and asked this caller and another caller why they thought so.  By contrast, Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson quickly concluded that a concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center was underway.

Confusion was caused by where the camera had been placed with some broadcasts showing the North Tower at an angle that completely obscured the South Tower and the approaching Flight 175.  The same was true for the collapse of the South Tower.  One station initially reported the loss of the structure as just falling debris.  A few news anchors were completely caught off guard because they were in the middle of interviews or trying to report the attack on the Pentagon and a possible car bomb outside the State Department.

After 22 years, seeing the 9-11 terrorist attacks unfold minute by excruciating minute still hits me like a punch to the gut.  As ABC's Diane Sawyer put it so eloquently back then, “To watch powerless, is a horror.”  There's some footage from that terrible day I still haven't seen and I'm not sure if or when I ever will but I am glad all of it exists on Youtube and other websites because it captures so well the confusion, shock, heartbreak and fear we experienced in 2001.

During a 2021 interview with 60 Minutes, New York firefighter Regina Wilson said, “So many of us sacrificed so much that this story can't get lost.  Because the world is changing fast.  And I don't want this to be something that's in a history book that a page is turned, and we're forgotten.”  She's right to have this concern because so often, still photographs, commemorative markers and stone monuments fail to capture the essence of a tragedy.  In 2016, my hometown unveiled its own 9-11 memorial complete with a large steel beam from the World Trade Center.  The archival footage of the attacks as they happened is 9-11's other memorial however, one that shows us a way of life and a sense of innocence that was lost forever on a sunny Tuesday morning so long ago.