I wrote this in 2016. I have not shared it on this site before, but 25 years later I feel it’s vitally important folks remember what it was like on September 11, 2001. For our younger readers, maybe some not even born then, ask some older folks to tell you their stories from that day. – Hyatt
September, 11, 2001.
As it unfolded….
It was a Monday.
It was a Monday night like so many before but unlike any afterwards even if we didn’t know it at the time.
I’d done The Williams and Hyatt Show at Cujo’s on Monday night, September 10, 2001. Nothing memorable about that date, at that time, other than it was early season Monday Night Football with the Giants and the Broncos playing. After the show, we hung around as usual and our producer, F. Scott Fitzgerald showed up at some point. Of course Don had to go back to the paper, so it was left to Scott and myself to enjoy some cold beer, eat some pizza, watch some football and solve all the world’s problems there at Cujo’s; which we did.
I got home at a decent hour, probably by midnight and proceeded to go through e-mails, return a few and write a few for the next day. E-mail. Ya. It was a deal back then. No Facebook, no Twitter and no website to update. Just respond to a few e-mails. No idea when I got to bed. I usually listened to the overnight talk radio shows back then. I probably drifted off around two a.m. The joys of not doing a morning show or having a sports cast the next day till two p.m. or so…
I woke up that Tuesday morning to Jack Dale on the radio.
Most of my mornings then were spent listening to a bit of Jack Dale’s Sportsline Show around 7:30 to 8 A.M. while I convinced myself it was legal to get out of bed. That morning my alarm went off around 7:30, I hit snooze as customary and then proceeded to sorta-sleep. A little before eight I gave up and allowed the radio to come back on.
I learned of the attacks of September 11, 2001 from Texas Tech Legend Jack Dale.
Except that’s not what I heard.
I heard him say it seemed like a small plane might have hit the Empire State Building or the World Trade Center in New York. It was right before the top of the hour break, so there wasn’t much talk or time.
I got out of bed and got into the shower.
It was a long shower. It had been a long night before.
After the show I came back to the radio and hear Jack and his son Steve talking about the building being on fire. I thought for a second it was our radio building but then remembered there had been a plan crash. It sounded bad.
I got dressed, and still only half way paying attention to Jack started getting ready for the day. A normal day.
Across the hall my friend’s wife was staying with us. Their house was being finished up and they’d recently married so they had a lot going on and she was spending the night at our house. She flew with Southwest Airlines at the time so she was in and out of town a lot and sometimes I didn’t even know she’d spent the night at our house before she’d come and gone.
As I got ready I could hear here say ,”Was it one of ours?” in a trembling voice.
I still wasn’t processing what was going on.
By the time I got ready to get out of the house she was already in the living room with the TV on.
It was a little past eight or so. There was a building on fire on TV. In a few minutes a plane would hit another building. There was crying.
That’s how September 11, 2001 started for me.
We both sat and watched for the next few minutes trying to process and understand what was going on. It didn’t make sense then and even watching it now on the replays I can vividly recall how hard it was to process what was happening in real-time.
Over the next few hours some of our reactions made sense and some didn’t.
I called my future-wife at her work and told her what was going on. They were locking down her building. There was a bank in the building so of course, it must be a target and must be locked down. It made sense. At the time.
I talked to the radio station and we were in the process of cancelling all live shows and going 24-7 news on the all-sports station. Made sense.
I watched more TV.
Around 11 or so it dawned on me that I needed a haircut. It was Tuesday so Howard’s Barber Shop was open. I went there. It made no sense but it seemed soothing to get a haircut. So I did. The news was on there, maybe a few other folks were in there but no one was really talking about what was going on. . .
So, I went and got gas. Why would you not? I mean we were under attack. Get gasoline. Fill up the truck. So I did. When Tessa finally got off work/let out of the controlled building, we took her vehicle and some others over to Market Street at 50th and waited in line to fill-up. If they could take down the Trade Centers, they could take down all our gas. Right?
It made perfectly good sense that evening.
And then we went home and we watched TV and it didn’t make sense.
At that point we thought maybe 25-30 thousand people had died. When the real numbers came out, it didn’t make it any less horrific.
Late that night President Bush spoke to the nation. It was unlike any speech I’d watched a sitting President give. It was a speech given to a nation under attack and under attack in a way we had no background to comprehend or understand. It’s easy to look back now and say some of the reactions were silly or unfounded or wrong. That night, there were no “knowns”. Folks under 30 or so need to keep that in mind. . .
So we went to bed. We went to bed and woke up in a world so different from the one I went to sleep to that Monday night after a fun remote at Cujo’s.
My show was the first live show on SportsRadio 1340 after the attacks. We went back on Thursday afternoon at 5p.m. We barely talked sports. We more or less just sorted out with listeners that day what we were feeling and what we were going through.
Sometimes I think we’re still trying to sort out what we are feeling when it comes to September 11, 2001.
I never want them to stop showing the raw, as-it-happened footage from that day. I want my son to experience it and to see it and to understand that evil manifest is real and that there are people who hate us just because we are us. For no other reason. That they are capable of killing us and will if given the chance and that it’s a helluva lot better to fight them over there on their home field than here on ours.
I don’t ever want to forget the anger either Anger is a powerful force and righteous anger can be used for good. It’s up to us to ensure we use that anger for good.
Through all of that, it amazes me still how I can recall the sights and feel and sounds not just of September 11 but of September 10. That night, that last night before it all changed is as much ingrained in my memory as that cloudless Tuesday.
We went to sleep in one America. We woke up in another.
Be the first to comment