My assigned beat was Hopkinsville and Christian County, Kentucky, just over the state line down Highway 41A past Fort Campbell (Home of the 101st Airborne). It required attending County Commission and City Council meetings, and covering the occasional arts event. Even though government and politics had never been an area of interest for me, I would have gladly covered trash pickup routes if assigned.
That sunny morning, I parked in the designated spot outside the building and headed inside to my desk. On Tuesdays, the writers would be busy working on the
following week’s story assignments, the sales folks would be selling ads to pay
for the printing of those stories, and a large newspaper publisher in Nashville would
be printing the current week’s issues which would hit our distribution racks
the next day.
I had barely made it to my seat that particular morning when
the desk phone rang with a call from the husband/reason I was in Clarksville.
He was at home during what would turn out to be his last couple weeks of a job
search. He asked if I had heard the news, then told me what was playing out on
TV at the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, phones were suddenly ringing all over
the office with calls for colleagues with the same horrible news. Shock rippled
through the office. There were tears.
The surreal day unfolded. We covered local news and events, and there
was no TV in the office. We were in the weird space of knowing that
terrible things were happening and being largely cut off from the streams of
information. The rarely used radio was turned on and played throughout the space.
It wasn’t enough, and during the day our group made several trips next door to a
neighboring business to crowd in their conference room to watch the coverage on their
TV.
At home, the wretched day became a freakish night glued
to the TV news. The Ex and his active duty friends wondered if he might be
called back for active duty, having just retired from the army in February. Calls
were made to and from family around the country. Time lost its usual cadence. The
roulette wheel of emotions would settle briefly on numb, angry, shocked, or sad,
before moving on to another and then another.
Fort Campbell heightened its security to Threatcon Delta, its
highest level. Access was limited to one gate and no visitors were allowed. All
military personnel were required to present IDs to enter and the traffic
stretched down Highway 41A for miles in each direction.
On Wednesday, the upcoming issue’s cover story was reformatted. We writers hit the phones and the streets to interview people for their reactions to
the events of the previous day. I crossed the state line into Kentucky to chat with people in parking lots and lunch spots.
My first issue with published articles is the September 19, 2001 issue with the cover article titled, “September 11, 2001: What We’ll Remember.” People we interviewed expressed feelings of shock, fear, grief, and pain. They told us about the phone calls they made or received upon hearing the news. One woman told me her mother-in-law called her with the news and to express her firm belief that it was “biblically, the end of time.” A Rite Aid worker told me the store had sold out of its entire stock of American flags.
At a popular Hopkinsville burger diner, I overheard someone in the lunch crowd say, “We are going to see things we have never seen before in this country.” They were prophetic words 20 years ago, and they still ring true today.
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