'Another day' in the news business?

By Rick Sampson: I was at work at KMRY Radio when the first bulletin came in from the Associated Press. "Plane hits World Trade Center" was all it said. We put it on the air immediately and said we hoped CBS News would have more details in a few minutes. Then the bulletins started appearing more frequently and more shocking. Each was worse than the last.

My nephew was living in Queens, N.Y., at the time, and I managed to reach him by email. (I think phone lines were down or jammed.) He was on the roof of his apartment building, and one email said, "The second tower just went down." A few minutes later, he messaged, "I'm scared." We all were.

I recall someone asking why today? My automatic response -- which I don't know to this day was correct -- was "this is 911."

Our first belief, based on that initial bulletin, was that a small plane had crashed. Little did we know the horror that would follow.

I remember Peter Teahen calling -- or perhaps we called him -- and he said he had to get to New York City as soon as possible to begin his disaster duties with the Red Cross. We told him the government was planning to close all airports, but somehow he managed to fly out of Cedar Rapids and begin what had to be a very trying job. We did phone interviews with him frequently over the next days or weeks, and to hear how horrible the situation was is just beyond belief.

I'm now retired, but I don't think any single day in my history of news will ever be as bad as that one.