10-year-old memories of 9/11 define us

The Gazette is collecting and displaying your memories of Sept. 11, 2001, for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. You can participate by clicking here. We are publishing some of the recollections people submit in a commemorative section in the Sunday, Sept. 11, Gazette.

Workers in The Gazette's Iowa City office were huddled around the television set the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, watching the first reports of the World Trade Center being hit by two airplanes when we saw the first tower collapsed on live television. 

There was puzzlement, then astonishment. Then one of our reporters at that time -- Jim Jacobson -- cried out, "There are people in there!"

After the second tower collapsed and a few minutes of convincing ourselves that what we were watching was real, I retreated to the restroom and leaned against the door to collect my thoughts. I was The Gazette's Iowa City editor and would be responsible for coverage from that end of the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City corridor and what I had just seen on live television was, to state the obvious, disturbing.

Yet, as the assignment and design editors at The Gazette prepared to meet at 10 a.m. for the first of several hourly meetings that included planning for an early afternoon "Extra" edition I found myself dealing with another matter. Because I was in Iowa City I had to participate in the 10 a.m. meeting via telephone. At 9:59 a.m., as I waited for the call from Cedar Rapids, I heard on the newsroom's police scanner a call for an ambulance at my house. Diabetic having an insulin reaction; blood sugar is dropping, the dispatcher said.

One of my daughters, then attending Kirkwood Community College but living at home to save expenses, has Type I diabetes and at that moment was in danger of having her blood sugar level drop so low that she would pass out. She was alone but mustered enough energy to call for help. I bolted for home, a 20- to 25-minute drive, trying to maintain focus on all that was happening.

When I arrived at the house a paramedic had helped her, and she was starting to recover. They were watching television coverage of the attack. "We lost a lot of us today," the paramedic said, cognizant of the fact that public safety responders perished.

However, the most unsettling personal moment with one of my family members was yet to come. It happened when another daughter, who graduated from the University of Iowa the previous spring and headed to Chicago to work, called me. All the stores were closed, people were fleeing town and no one was on the streets, she told me from her Lincoln Park apartment just off the usually busy Clark Street. People feared Chicago may be a target and were jamming the expressways, she said.

"I'm scared," she said.

At that moment I told one of my children, who trusted their mother and father to care for them as they grew up, something I never imagined saying: I can't guarantee that you are safe.

And while both my wife and I advised her on things to do -- don't try driving out of town on the expressway, find a spot where others may gather, find a church, stay home and lock the doors -- we faced the same truth Americans across the country realized at that particular moment:

In a country where freedom allows us to think and act as individuals and where our notion of personal safety in public far exceeds that of countries where dangers run from out-of-control crime to government-support anarchy to civil war, we couldn't be guaranteed that we were safe.