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The day it all changed
A co-worker poked her head into my office to tell me an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. My immediate thought was that it was a mishap regarding a small Cessna or something. No big deal.
Then came the second plane. And we still haven't recovered.
For reasons I can't recall, I went to work early that bright, warm Tuesday morning. I may have had one of these columns due and wanted to bat it out before moving on to other tasks.
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What other horrors would that day hold in store?
Staff writer Barbara Miller and I decided to head to the "T" station at South Hills Village to talk with people who were headed home after their buildings in downtown Pittsburgh were evacuated.
From there, we headed to Canonsburg, with the idea of finding folks with recollections of the last time the United States had come under attack: Dec. 7, 1941. Why Canonsburg? I think the small-town, main-street ambiance seemed to lend itself to candid commentary.
At any rate, I remember Sept. 11, 2001, as being unusually hot for a late-summer day, a perception that no doubt was exacerbated by the enormity of events. I know I was sweating profusely as I asked suitably aged people what they recalled about Pearl Harbor.
Barbara ended up writing the story; my main contribution came from a telephone call to the late Howard Jack, former Peters Township School District superintendent.
Dr. Jack had been a student at Washington & Jefferson College when the Japanese attacked, and he kindly told me everything he remembered from that day of infamy.
The Sept. 12 edition of the Observer-Reporter featured stories and contributions from just about every member of the newspaper staff, focusing on local reactions to the events in New York City and Washington, D.C. Plus a couple of our reporters traveled at breakneck speed out to Shanksville for eyewitness accounts of the Flight 93 crash.
As a group, we were exhausted. But we were back on the job the next day, talking to more local people about the national tragedy.
That became a spooky week, of course, with no airplanes flying overhead, with most sporting events postponed. I remember working in my yard amid silence, wondering if the American way of life had changed forever.
I guess it has. But compared with what everyone must have been thinking on the morning of 9/11, it could have ended up much worse.
Online editor Harry Funk can be reached at hfunk@observer-reporter.com.
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