That morning - in the shadow of the Sears Tower, just north of the downtown Loop - our agency was just opening for the day. A few of us wandered in and turned on the three televisions that filled our 'newsroom-style' PR agency with the constant chatter of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.
I remember standing there in the mostly empty room watching video that they never showed again - the nose of the plane coming through the building, into the camera.
I remember the confusion - the reporters going back and forth about the Mall being on fire, foreign attacks, a plane headed for Chicago or Pittsburgh or L.A...
Even at 9:30, our city was already shutting down - commuters heading home to be with family, to get away from the bullseye of the target. My then-husband (JT) was at a conference in L.A. I called him and begged him to stay at the hotel - we were attacked, I said; I think we're at War.
And, even as the country became more real and earnest and compassionate (remember the news anchors barely able to hold back tears that night? the strangers helping each other search for lost loved ones at ground zero?), our agency world held that strange, rarefied quality of not being part of the real world - of being more cynical, privy to the real story, untouched.
We didn't close. We watched out the windows - looking at the Hancock to the East and the Sears Tower to the South. We gathered around the televisions. Our bosses reminded us there was work to be done. Our executives went to a new business pitch.
I don't remember how I got home that night. I think the trains had been shut down.
The neighborhood was strangely quiet - everyone inside, watching hours of television, trying to understand.
I went inside, turned on the TV again. Later, headed out to the beach, talked to my bleary-eyed neighbors. Was amazed at how the world had changed and that we had stayed at work as if it was just another news story…
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