Tuesday, September 11th, 2001 will forever be remembered as a pivotal day in American history, as the United States suffered a terrorist attack in New York City, Washington D.C., and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Many news/talk radio professionals on the air today were also hosting shows or leading brands around the country on that fateful day.
On the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we asked several news/talk radio hosts and programmers to share their memories from that fateful day.
These are their stories.
Former WCBS Newsradio 880 Brand Manager Tim Scheld
“I was a network correspondent at ABC. So I was the New York-based network guy, and it was Election Day, primary day in New York City. So there was a mayoral election. So I was starting late so that I could work late, and so that I could wrap up and be the reporter who could put those stories together at night. I was still in my driveway when the first plane hit, and I was it was pretty clear to me that I better get into the city as quickly as I could.
“Then I spent the next many hours trying to get into New York, while a lot of people were trying to get out. My story is such that I tried to drive a couple of different ways that I was blocked. The George Washington Bridge was closed. I live in New Jersey, so the George Washington Bridge was closed. I came back and went up to Westchester and tried to go to Tappan Zee Bridge. And that became an issue, and ultimately, I came back home.
“I don’t remember how I communicated with my wife. Somehow, I had a phone call to her, and she met me at a local shopping mall in Rockland County with a bike, I put the bike in the back of my car, and I drove as far as I could to the Bronx, parked the car and get on the bike, and rode into New York City. Then I was reporting there for the next several days at or around Ground Zero for ABC. So I wasn’t down there when it happened. I wasn’t down there when the buildings collapsed. But that was my beat for the next many months at the World Trade Center.”
Former News/Talk Radio — Including at KDKA and WABC — Program Director Dave LaBrozzi
“I was in Pittsburgh, and we were on the air broadcasting live. It was one of those mornings that Krispy Kreme had just opened up and it was a big deal back then. We had the show live and we have a band and the mayor, all kind of TV people. I remember driving back to the station in the 9 AM hour and hearing the news. I thought ‘Wow, this is gonna be a very, very sad day.’ From that point on, we went wall-to-wall coverage that day for the remainder of the day.
“What really sticks in my mind is a year later. I had to go to Shanksville because I oversaw Johnstown (Pennsylvania) when I was one of the regional guys for Clear Channel. Standing in that field at 4 AM on the one year anniversary of that event is a day I’ll never forget, either. The wind was howling and it was a very eerie feeling. The President was going to be there that day, so we were feeding audio to the rest of the country that day. Being in that field that early in the morning was something I’ll never forget, along with the sadness that I felt on the day itself as I drove back to the radio station. You don’t forget those kind of days.”
OutKick Host Tomi Lahren
“I was in the fourth grade. So, probably the only person that you’re talking to that was in the fourth grade at that time. For me, I’ve always loved my country. It’s always meant a lot to me. I was raised that way, to love my country. Even when you’re a fourth grader, this stuff meant more to me than your average fourth grader. I grew up in South Dakota, so New York seemed so far away when you’re South Dakota in the fourth grade. Watching it, and feeling proud to be an American is something that is a Midwestern value that I had … When I looked around in the fourth grade, I saw a bunch of people who loved our country.”
Good Day Host Doug Stephan
“I was on the air when it took place. I was looking at a television screen. My co-host at the time was Roberta Facinelli, who lived in New York City. She watched both planes crash into the World Trade Centers. We were about to go into a break, and she said, ‘I just saw something.’ She lived down on 29th, so she could see over the World Trade Center. And she saw the first plane going and she thought it was a small private plane, but she talked about it almost immediately as it was happening, so she stayed on with me.
“And then when the next plane hit, I stayed on the air for a long time that day because the kid who followed me was driving to the studio. The studios were in Washington. I wasn’t in Washington, but he did the show that he did from Washington, and he was driving by the Pentagon as the American (Airlines) plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon. So I had him on the air telling us what it looked like, what was going on. And then I had Roberta, she couldn’t move. She’d go outside and she could look at what was going on.
“So then I started nosing around American 11, which had taken off from Logan at 8:10 AM, I believe, was the first plane to be hijacked, and I knew the pilot. The pilot was a guy named John Ogonowski, who was a farmer in addition to being an airline pilot. And I knew him because he and I were both very involved in the agronomy of the state of Massachusetts. He was a very Polish, crew-cut guy, strong as an ox, and I can’t imagine that anybody got into the cockpit and didn’t get a ‘What for,’ before they got in.
“But he was the pilot on American 11. So I remember talking about him when I found out who it was, because it didn’t take long before the news media was full of ‘This was the pilot, this was the co-pilot.’ I knew he was an American pilot, and he’d had enough seniority and the Boston-LA route was something that the guys who had more seniority would take. And he did Boston to LA usually about seven or eight times a month. So the fact that he was in that plane made it very personal. And then Roberta being there made it very personal as well.
“So each year you kind of go back. You can’t help but talk about it, those remembrances and all the other stuff that played into it, what went on that day. We talk about it still because I have such vivid memories of being on the air that day.”
Joe Pags, Host of The Joe Pags Show
“I was a television news anchor in Lansing, Michigan. I was asleep. I had a tendency to stay up very late, and get up late. My wife woke me up at nine o’clock in the morning. We just recently, a few years earlier, been to Manhattan and stood beneath the World Trade Center and went, ‘Wow. This is nuts. This is crazy.’ She got me up. We turned on the TV, and were hearing about how a plane went into it. I thought somebody was drunk, maybe the pilot had a heart attack. You don’t think somebody’s attacking us.
“And then we watched the second plane hit, and I sat there stunned for about five minutes. I threw my suit on and went to work and stood outside the capitol in Lansing all day doing interviews. And I mean, that day we were hearing Osama bin Laden’s name and al-Qaeda’s name. But the experience was one that I became a drone and was just the guy doing the job, bringing the information. I didn’t allow myself to have the emotion that I would have as a guy from New York originally, and a guy who loves America seeing that we were under attack, I didn’t let that get to me.
“I mean, probably a week or two later, I cried — a lot — but my job was to do what I did, and my job was to get to the bottom of what was the biggest news story my life that was unfolding in front of us. So that’s what it was. I was at work probably 15 hours that day, just trying to get all the information we could. We were an ABC affiliate in Lansing. We were also a CNN affiliate, so we all the information from them. And it was just, it was a day that I still don’t believe, even to this day, really unfolded the way that we saw it unfolding. But it did. I covered it.
“Subsequently, I won an award from the State of Michigan for excellence in reporting on the events. The House of Representatives, I got a flag from them about my excellence in reporting and so on. But interestingly, none of that mattered. What mattered was, am I getting the people the information that I’m getting as soon as I’m getting it back to my job that day? It really solidified what my job was as a communicator. But looking back at it, emotionally, I was a non-emotional information source for weeks, and then eventually — like I think most Americans who love this country — I cried, and really hit me hard that oh my god what happened to us here.”
