Our newsroom began talking a couple of months ago about pulling together a few stories to mark the 25th year since the 9/11 terrorist attacks that so profoundly changed this country. The memories are discomforting, but that’s often the case with calamitous events that shape history.
This edition contains some personal accounts from people who were at what became known as Ground Zero soon after the terrorists flew planes into and toppled the Twin Towers. They are emotional remembrances of a singularly unique chapter in a story that’s still being written.
Those of us who then worked at The Smoky Mountain News — like the rest of the world — watched the events unfold in real time on computer screens. 9/11 was a Tuesday, so at the same time we were trying to put out that week’s edition of the newspaper. As the extent of the attacks continued to unfold, I ditched the original column I had written for that edition and started writing about the attacks and what I was feeling at the time. That column is reprinted below.