by Wendy Walker
That is why I loved this lesson so much, and why I kept Reagan’s words on my desk in clear view. I bet Reagan is right, I thought to myself when I first saw it. People always find out who did the work. You just have to have a good attitude and not worry about getting credit, because even if it looks different than you expected, the end product is where you can derive your satisfaction.
CHAPTER 10
Be Grateful Every Day of Your Life
It’s hard to believe that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, occurred nearly a decade ago. It still feels raw: the shock, the sorrow, and the disbelief as we watched thousands of innocent people lose their lives in an instant. As I consider this tragedy that forever changed the way we view life in the United States and the rest of the world, I see that those of us who lost loved ones can only feel grateful that we are here today, to speak up for those who were silenced forever.
Granted, this was the worst collective disaster that Americans ever experienced firsthand on our native soil. But the heart of the story is in the personal details, the smaller anecdotes of courage, compassion, and survival under fire that make this historical event come alive in its agonies and its triumphs. It seems that it takes a tragedy to bring out certain enviable human qualities. I’m talking about the kind of courage that makes us wonder, just before we drift off to sleep at night, what we would have done, faced with a similar situation. Would we have measured up? Would we have been as selfless as some of the unsung heroes who rose to the occasion and sacrificed themselves to help others? How can we express our gratitude for still being here and being able to feel our sadness, give our opinions, and grieve our losses?
These kinds of pivotal, earth-shattering events imprint on people’s minds so permanently, most of us remember exactly where we were, what we said, and what we were doing at the time. The attacks on September 11 were just such events that profoundly affected people all over the world. Whether or not we lost family and friends, no one was spared the emotional impact. Each of us turned on our television sets to view the now all too familiar images of ash-laden people, the lucky ones, who looked like ghosts, faces struck dumb in shock, stumbling away from a white cloud of destruction that seemed to be chasing them down the street. For a brief moment, most everyone in the world was looking at the same live pictures and holding our breaths to see what was coming next.
You had to be in a bubble not to know what was happening on September 11. This tragedy of epic proportions stunned the entire world, including those of us who were reporting the news. I was on the West Coast, in bed, asleep, when I got a call from Suzy. “Turn on the television right now,” was all she said.
I ran into my office, dropped into my chair, and stared at the images of one of the tallest buildings in the world, One World Trade Center, on fire, spewing black smoke. At CNN Atlanta, anchor Carol Lin broke into a commercial at 8:49 a.m., EST, and said:
This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating is happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is, once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center.
My stomach churning, numb with disbelief, I watched the second plane slam into the next World Trade Center building. This is not an accident, I told myself as thoughts of terrorism escalated. When the giant structures crumbled to dust right in front of our eyes a short time later, my first thought was, How many other planes are in the sky right now? Is it over or has it only just started?
Every network and cable station, national and international, had their cameras set on what we would come to call Ground Zero, as we watched the planes slam into the building over and over again in a continuous tape loop, as if it were happening every three to five minutes. I scanned the monitors, trying to spot anything else in the sky, when I saw my friend, Jim Miklaszewski, Pentagon correspondent for NBC, come on the air. He started to give his report when a deafening crash sounded. Mik automatically ducked down, as if to protect himself from an invisible blow.
Now, on this monumental morning, Mik told his viewing audience that he needed to get off the air to see what had happened. We soon found out that he had been reacting to the deafening crash of the third plane slamming into the side of the Pentagon while he was on the air, a short distance away. Anchors Daryn Kagan and Leon Harris at CNN were live on the air just after 9 a.m., EST, as correspondent David Ensor reported that US officials had determined that “this is a terrorist attack.” Aaron Brown, who had just come to CNN from ABC, anchored the day and night following the attacks. And I’m sure that anchor Paula Zahn will never forget this day, not only for the tragedy itself, but it just so happened that she was new to CNN, also, and September 11 was the day that she was slated to begin.
A little after 10 a.m., when the fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania, my phone was ringing off the hook and thousands of e-mails were clogging my in-box. A colleague who managed to get through to me mentioned that Barbara Olson, a well-known conservative commentator and a friend of mine, might have been on the plane that slammed into the Pentagon. Both she and her husband, Ted Olson, then United States Solicitor General, had appeared on our show various times and I liked them both a lot.
Without thinking, I called Katie Couric, who was of course the host of the Today show at NBC, during her commercial break. After we said hello, we sat silently on the phone together, listening to each other breathe, taking a brief moment of comfort in the profound silence of a long friendship. Just before we hung up, I said, “Katie, I think Barbara Olson was on the plane that hit the Pentagon.”
In a few minutes, Barbara’s presence on the plane was confirmed as was her death, and Katie went on the air to report it. A few days later, the crawl beneath the television picture would run down the names of the dead, which seemed to go on and on. At that point, we had no idea how many people we had lost, but we knew the numbers were in the thousands.
The devastation hit me both personally and collectively. I was shattered by the tragedy, by the idea of terrorism on our soil, and the loss of someone I knew, but at the same time, I was Larry’s executive producer and I had a responsibility to CNN to keep it together. As much as I felt the pull downward into the blackness of this tragic day, I needed to gather my wits about me and keep moving. My first responsibility was to book guests for the show that night who would help the public cope with their fear and learn more about what was actually happening. I was determined that our reporting would be a service to the nation, so I had to make sure we did everything right.
By the time Larry King Live aired on September 11, 2001, we had booked fifteen guests, including: New York Governor George Pataki; former Secretary of State James Baker; Senator John Warner from Virginia; Senator John Kerry from Massachusetts; Senator Dianne Feinstein from California; former Defense Secretary William Cohen; and four civilian eyewitnesses. It was established at airtime that approximately two hundred firemen and seventy-eight policemen were missing. An eyewitness, Bill Reitman, who worked in One World Trade Center on the eighty-first floor, said that when he was heading down the long flights of stairs, he saw firemen collapsing from smoke inhalation and the heavy loads they were carrying, including oxygen tanks and hoses. Rudy Giuliani, Mayor of New York, joined us toward the end of the show to report that both Chief Peter Ganci of the fire department and Ray Downey, the deputy commissioner, were missing. Later they were pronounced dead.
In the first few days, we showed footage of the immediate area where the tragedy had occurred, with people standing in the streets, forlorn and grief-stricken, clutching photographs of missing loved ones, holding them toward the cameras, pleading for news or si
ghtings. “Have you seen my son?” “How about my wife? I forgot to kiss her good-bye this morning.” Additional photos were tacked up on exterior walls as people entreated the camera crews to shine a light on the images.
Our journalists covered the grisly moment-to-moment unravelings of the terrorist attacks and we all were stretched beyond our limits whether we were in front of the camera or behind it. I recall a vague foglike pall surrounding me that was keeping my emotions separated from the horrific stories that were pouring in over the communication channels. I had dropped into my producer’s chair early that morning with a phone glued to my ear and barely moved until after the show aired that night, thirteen grueling hours later. It felt like a year had passed, and at the same time an instant, when it was finally 7 p.m. and the show was finished. I pushed away from my desk, muttering, “I don’t know if I should fall into bed and sleep or go to Starbuck’s.”
My daughter, Amaya, who was five at the time, looked me over. My hair was in complete disarray, my eyes were bloodshot, the circles under my eyes had circles, and I was so mentally exhausted I could barely speak. “If I were you,” my precocious little five-year-old said, “I’d go to Starbuck’s.”
I smiled at her innocent wisdom. There was no way I could fall asleep right now, no matter how tired I was. I e-mailed Jim Miklaszewski at the Pentagon, using his nickname. “Mik, I love you,” I wrote. I said “I love you” to a lot of people that day. Then I hit the closest Starbuck’s for a tall latte and headed back home. I had never been so keenly aware of being grateful and lucky to be alive and wanting to reach out to my friends and family.
While the caffeine infiltrated my nervous system, my first personal call went out to Sarah Ferguson, the duchess of York, who had appeared on our show. She and I had become friends, and now, in 2001, she had office space at the top of the World Trade Center, within the suite of offices belonging to Cantor Fitzgerald. It was reported that almost the entire staff of Cantor Fitzgerald had been killed, and I dialed Sarah’s number tentatively. I was deeply relieved when she picked up her cell phone. Speaking in a hushed, stunned voice, she said, “I’m okay, Wendy. I don’t know why, but I didn’t go in to the office this morning.”
Sarah was lucky to still be alive to answer her phone. If only Barbara Olson had been so fortunate. The toughest call I made during that time was to Ted Olson, Barbara’s husband, who was a major political figure at the time.
“She loved doing your show,” Ted told me. “It made her happy.”
What he told me next finally caused me to break down. Apparently, Barbara had been booked on a flight on September 10, 2001, one day earlier, to go from Washington’s Dulles Airport to Los Angeles. But she had decided to stay behind so she could see her husband on his birthday, even if it was just to kiss him good-bye. That’s how in love they were and how amazing their marriage was.
In a shaky voice, Ted told me that Barbara had called him from American Airlines Flight 77 and said, “We’re being taken over. They have box cutters. What the hell is going on?”
Ted told her the truth without hesitation. “Two planes just crashed into the World Trade Center.”
Now she knew she was going to die, and Ted was struggling with the fact that he had told her. “I think I did the right thing,” he said, his voice crackling with emotion. That was when I lost it. The idea that he had respected his wife’s courage enough to tell her the truth under the most devastating circumstances was more than I could bear without breaking down. Their relationship remains a role model for me when it comes to great marriages.
Courage under strain and grief was the theme of the aftermath of this terrible tragedy. Of all the survivors we had on the show during the four months following the terrorist attacks, Michael Hingson, a fifty-one-year-old blind man, and Roselle, his seeing eye dog, stand out. Hingson’s gratitude and faith in the midst of this situation inspired everyone. We had Michael and Roselle on the show several times. Here are some excerpts from his interview one year after he survived the attacks.
KING: Roselle has been honored with a Congressional insert saluting her inspirational story, and Roselle is receiving the American Kennel Club’s 2002 ace Award as Service Dog of the Year. A big doggie deal, and Roselle deserves it all. How are you doing, Michael?
HINGSON: It’s been a year of change…
KING: Can you describe briefly, on 9/11, what did you see, what did you hear? What happened?
HINGSON: When the airplane first struck the tower, I felt as much as heard a thud, just a big explosion. And then the building tilted… our guests at the office at the time were screaming and running toward the exit. I was in my office with a colleague, David Frank. He was the first to identify there was fire above us. I heard debris falling… I wasn’t going to leave until they [our guests] were gone. David got them headed towards the stairs. I had attended lots of fire drills, so I knew not to take elevators. I told David to make sure they took the stairs. I called my wife while David was getting our guests out, to tell her that something happened, and then we left.
KING: How? Were you panicky?
HINGSON: No, I couldn’t afford to be. Very consciously, I Felt a calming sense from God. I asked God what to do, and just had a feeling to stay calm. And so I did… I took Roselle’s harness and gave her the appropriate command, such as to go forward, to go left and right and so on, to get where we needed to go. It was my responsibility to know how to get to the stairs, and her job to make sure we walked safely.
KING: Once you’re in the stairs, you’re hearing a lot of people around you? Screaming?
HINGSON: Not too much. It was tense, but people were calm. We had some burned victims pass us, but it was calm.
KING: You just followed them—followed her down the stairs?
HINGSON: Right. We [Roselle and I] work together, and I know we helped others go down the stairs. Roselle had a chance to flirt with some of the firemen… because as they came up, they would ask me if I were okay. Roselle gave lots of kisses and I know some of them petted Roselle.
KING: What happened when you got to ground?
HINGSON: We went to a parking lot across from Two World Trade Center. But before we got there, the building collapsed, so we literally turned and ran for our lives, and ran to a subway station to avoid some of the dust cloud. By that time, we inhaled a lot.
KING: How did you not run into things?
HINGSON: Roselle. Strictly following Roselle. I told Roselle to go forward. When we got to the end of the buildings, I could hear that we were at the end of the building. I knew we were at a street corner. I told her to go right, because that was away from the Trade Center. She turned and we went, and there were a lot of people running with us, and around us. So it was kind of a crowd mentality.
KING: At any time during all of this, were you scared?
HINGSON: Two times. Once when the building was hit. The other time, when the tower was coming down. I recall the second time, saying to God, how do you do this? You got us out of this building just for another one to collapse on us? Again, I was overwhelmed with a sense of calm and a sense of—don’t worry about what you can’t control. That’s one of the things that I talk about in a lot of my speeches, is the concept of trust, and reminding people, don’t worry about what you can’t control. Worry about what you can.
Booking the show became methodical as we covered the stories surrounding the terrorist attacks, night after night, for four months straight. Each day, we sorted through the developments and gathered the appropriate images and people to report the next leg of the unfolding story. At some point early on, we decided to stop using the footage of the planes hitting the buildings over and over. I remember having some spirited debates with my colleagues at the time, about whether it was necessary to rerun these grief- and terror-provoking images. I didn’t think it was.
Back in 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded in clear sight of a viewing audience, we realized we did not need to see the devastating moment many ti
mes over to convey the agony. Now, in 2001, we took into consideration the influential voices of the 9/11 victims’ families, who explained that each time they saw these unnerving images, they were forced to relive their grief as if it were happening for the very first time. In the end, there was no definitive decision among the networks to stop using the images. We each made our personal decisions and acted accordingly, doing our best to be sensitive to those who had lost their loved ones.
I thought for a moment. What if someone I loved had been caught up in this? I felt a rush of gratitude flow through me that my family and I were spared. But what if we got up each day and felt grateful, above all other feelings, just to be alive on this day, no matter if something bad happened or not? What if gratitude were a lifestyle instead of an isolated incident? Why is it human nature to only feel gratitude in times of tragedy?
By December 2001, four months in, the earth was still smoking at Ground Zero and we were still doing shows about it. When a reporter asked me when I would stop, I remember shaking my head and saying, “When it feels right.”
It felt right to stop the coverage on New Year’s of 2002. I wanted a fresh start, so did everyone else, and it was somewhat of a relief to be moving on. The heartbreak would never go away, and there was no way to feel “good” about the shows we did, but I felt that we had done a thorough job of covering the attacks in a respectful way that honored both the fallen and their families. We had focused on telling the truth and allowing people to feel the depth of their pain. I was grateful to have survived this sudden attack with enough inner strength and fortitude to help communicate the depth and breadth of what we were all feeling.
Of course, there is no such thing as closure when you’re dealing with such a far-reaching tragedy and with numerous pregnant women being left to fend for themselves and children being orphaned or raised by one parent instead of two. The stories of loss go on and on. But if I had to choose one story that personifies the odd serendipities that occurred surrounding this time, I would choose meeting up with someone in a most unlikely situation.