It is hard to believe it has been 25 years since the 9-11 terrorist attacks on our country. Nearly 3,000 people perished that day, Sept. 11th, 2001, including more than 400 police officers and firefighters.
I tried to watch some of the television programs reliving the events last week. I had to turn them off.
In another life, I was corporate vice president for a large media company. We had newspapers, magazines, radio, TV stations, outdoor advertising, and book publishing houses in 27 states and several foreign countries. I worked for Morris Communications Corporation for 40 years.
It was a family-owned company, and at the time, one of the country’s largest media companies. My work involved heavy air travel. In my last year at Morris, I traveled more than 27 weeks of the year. We had our own planes, but I was often flying commercial, too.
On September 11th, I was supposed to be in New York City. I had an appointment at 10 a.m. in the North Tower of the World Trade Center that day. Instead, however, I was at my desk at our corporate headquarters in Augusta on that fateful day. I had cut my weekly trip to New York, as I’d been out of the office the whole week prior to 9-11.
My original schedule had me arriving on Monday and checking in at the Marriott in the financial district, just blocks away from the Trade Center. I had business calls set up for Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday I was to attend a national newspaper board meeting. Friday was to be shopping and catching a play before leaving New York on Saturday.
However, I changed my plans, and I never made that trip. Instead, at 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, I was drinking coffee at my desk when my assistant told me that a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center.
I first thought maybe it was a news helicopter; however, the second plane hit the South Tower 20 minutes later. That day changed my life in many ways.
I wouldn’t have been in the North Tower, but getting my day started in the nearby Marriott. For years, I would return to New York and run or walk the 100 blocks from Midtown to visit the site.
My business friends were gone, as were the towers we saw through the crime cleanup process. The Marriott sustained major damage and was later taken down. The attacks changed our country in many ways, and I feel it is still trying to recover.
I retired from Morris in 2003. A great job was not as much fun after 9-11. Travel got to be a hassle, just to get through security. In the end, I’m glad I was able to come home and grow our family’s media company here in Georgia’s Lake Country.
However, the memories of that day still exist strongly in my mind.