story1023.xml
Title
story1023.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-08-14
911DA Story: Story
As a former U.S. congressman, I do quite a bit of speaking. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I awoke to a radio alarm in my suite at the Inn at Seventh Mountain, near Bend, Oregon. I set the alarm for six o'clock as I was not satisfied with the outline of my remarks written the previous evening. Bob Edwards seemed uncertain and off-balance and unusual pauses came through the NPR broadcast. Still groggy, I rolled over, thinking at some level in my fog that even the best in the business can have off days.
Someone said that the New York City election would surely be postponed. Postponed? Why would you postpone an election. I actually thought it was a garbage strike, a transportation strike, or both. Then came the words:
"World Trade Center...the airplane was a passenger jet..."
I threw off my blankets and ran to turn on CNN. It was all there in unimaginable, unthinkable detail. Repeated calls to my son, an actor living living in Brooklyn, were futile. I had my laptop for my speech. It is loaded with AOL. My son uses AOL! Frantically, I logged on and saw his screen name. We filled the next minutes with instant messages. He and his wife were okay. Scared but okay. They had been on the roof of their brownstone and seen the first tower building. Now they were in the apartment trying to reach relatives. They had no TV, no radio, no cell phone--their transmitter was on one of the towers.
I watched with horror as the second plane hit. My fingers flashed across my computer keyboard to let my son know. "I know Dad," he said. "We saw it right after the plane hit and its smoke and stench our way."
"No, no!" I typed. "ANOTHER plane. It has hit the second tower." Silence for several minutes. Then Kelly came back on, comprehending the unspeakable: "Oh God, oh dad, everything's changed forever."
A hour later, I scrapped my speech and spoke about the international and domestic terror. I was mildly chastised for this--and I take no comfort in it--but I said I was convinced that it had been bin Laden. The time was eleven o'clock in the morning, Pacific time.
Someone said that the New York City election would surely be postponed. Postponed? Why would you postpone an election. I actually thought it was a garbage strike, a transportation strike, or both. Then came the words:
"World Trade Center...the airplane was a passenger jet..."
I threw off my blankets and ran to turn on CNN. It was all there in unimaginable, unthinkable detail. Repeated calls to my son, an actor living living in Brooklyn, were futile. I had my laptop for my speech. It is loaded with AOL. My son uses AOL! Frantically, I logged on and saw his screen name. We filled the next minutes with instant messages. He and his wife were okay. Scared but okay. They had been on the roof of their brownstone and seen the first tower building. Now they were in the apartment trying to reach relatives. They had no TV, no radio, no cell phone--their transmitter was on one of the towers.
I watched with horror as the second plane hit. My fingers flashed across my computer keyboard to let my son know. "I know Dad," he said. "We saw it right after the plane hit and its smoke and stench our way."
"No, no!" I typed. "ANOTHER plane. It has hit the second tower." Silence for several minutes. Then Kelly came back on, comprehending the unspeakable: "Oh God, oh dad, everything's changed forever."
A hour later, I scrapped my speech and spoke about the international and domestic terror. I was mildly chastised for this--and I take no comfort in it--but I said I was convinced that it had been bin Laden. The time was eleven o'clock in the morning, Pacific time.
Collection
Citation
“story1023.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 20, 2025, https://www.911digitalarchive.org/items/show/17570.