I was working for USA Today in Chicago and that morning, as it happened, I was at an appointment with an obstetrician with my wife, Cindy, who was three months pregnant with our first child.

I got a call from my editor who said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. At first, I thought it was some crazy accident with a small plane or something. I immediately went into the waiting room to watch the news accounts. 

When it became clear that this was a terrorist act, I talked to the national desk and they asked me to head to the Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower) another iconic tall building in the U.S., in case there were multiple attacks. I remember rushing toward the building as everybody else was fleeing. One person stopped me and said I should turn around. I ended up interviewing him and several others about the fear of an attack in Chicago. I spent several hours talking to people on the ground. I think I got one or two paragraphs into the main news story.

I felt relieved and grateful that there was no attack in Chicago. Two days later I took the first flight I could get to Newark and made my way into Manhattan to cover the aftermath of the attack. I spent the next two weeks on the ground in NYC as rescue and recovery operations continued.

Cindy, by the way, was not so thrilled about me going to NYC.

Deborah Howlett teaches at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and is editor of NJ State House News Service.

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