9/11 as it happened

Holy fuck. Just looked. I grew up in that neighborhood and have played that golf course countless times (very, very, very average course .... but they charge a fair price).

How much does that course mean to me? This statue is by the fifth tee box, and was placed in honor of my mom, who was a regular and in the community.


What a facepalm.

 

no thanks

 

I'm certain I've told this story before, but NASCAR.com was located on the 18th floor of the Centennial Tower building in Atlanta on 9/11, so halfway up the tallest building closest to Hartsfield Airport, which at the time felt like we were right in the crosshairs.

I showed up in the office just moments after the first plane hit. The other editors had the television on, and CNN was in the process of switching all non-essential servers over because their website couldn't handle the volume of queries. So our VP makes a quick call to NASCAR to tell them we're trying to build a dummy front page with a black border and American flag for our site, and then we'd shut down our end.

The entire Turner security force locked down CNN Center, so we were sitting there with nobody guarding us.

About that time, the managing editor waltzes in and immediately wants to know why we're watching TV when the NASCAR Trivia column needs to be posted. He was completely oblivious to the manic scrambling we're trying to do to make sure everything is correct before CNN shut us down. Even after the towers fell, he still didn't have any idea why we weren't posting new content because "that's not NASCAR news."

He wasn't the only clueless person. It took NASCAR several days to finally postpone New Hampshire, which would have been a Rozellian decision. Turner basically told Daytona Beach that the website wasn't going to be available if they raced (and I think TV put some pressure on as well). Later, President Mike Helton admitted they weren't convinced until the last possible moment because they didn't want to lose the money.

And the ME got fired about three months later for using a company AMEX card at the strip club where he was seeing one of the dancers.

 

My ex-wife was in the Empire State Building for a conference that morning. Saw the second plane hit and then had to walk all the way down the building while thinking the Empire State Building was getting hit next. I can only imagine what that feeling must have been like. Like being in a war zone and expecting a missile to hit your location at any second. Fuck me.

She could never watch any footage of 9/11 without freaking out and would demand the channel be changed whenever footage came on. Was in therapy for a while after, severe anxiety.

 

At least he died doing what (or who) he loved.

 

I was doing my morning radio show. TVs we’re on ESPN. A caller told us about the first plane. We flipped to CNN just as the second hit. I said “Oh shit” on air and my co-host said “We switching to news right now.”

 

I have two memories that stick in my mind 20-plus years later. I'd been out walking the dog, but when I turned on the TV to see the stock ticker and learned what was happening, I got in my car and drove to the Herald, because I knew there'd be work. When I got there, I saw everyone else had had the same reaction, the movie reviewer, the business editor, we sports folk, everybody, It was a moment of pride in what became an awful day of work.
The next day was Wednesday, so I went to Foxboro. Offensive lineman Joe Andruzzi was the only interview. He came from a family where all males were either NYC cops or firefighters. None of his direct relatives had died, but many people he'd known as family friends had. At the end of the interview, he said, unprompted, "guys, we're going to get through this." It was the first and only time in my career an athlete used the word "we" to include the media.

 

He wound up in jail one weekend after she called the cops during a drunken spat (this was just before he got canned). Thankfully, Gwen and I were on a trip. Apparently he could only remember my phone number, so there were over 30 frantic calls recorded on my answering machine where he was able to get out two or three words before the collect call operator hung up.

And yeah, he bounced around a number of little western North Carolina newspapers after that fiasco, eventually dying of a heart attack some years later.

 

Lets Rolls ... you gotta have a big fucking pair of yarbles to name 'em that.