Since 9/11: A Journalist Remembers

In commemoration of the decade since Sept. 11, Goose Creek Patch is looking at the stories of several local residents on that day and how it has impacted each of their lives. Share your first-person stories by emailing greg.hambrick@patch.com. We'll collect them and run them Sunday.

The half-hour that I sat in front of the TV watching the Twin Towers smoke, and then tumble, is a bit of a blur 10 years out. I remember talking to my mom and my partner, sharing that line "Are you watching this?"

At some point, it dawned on me that I had a job to do. I was a student, but I was also a news reporter for the school's newspaper. And this was possibly the most important news story of the career that I hadn't really started yet.

I left the apartment with a battery-powered clock radio, holding it to my ear as I crossed the campus. In hindsight it seems like such a ridiculous thing to do, but it was life before apps and you really didn't know what was going to happen next.

The image that sticks with me from the rest of the day is a hurried newsroom of aspiring journalists trying to put a newspaper together. Meanwhile, two blocks away, welders were sealing manhole covers around the Statehouse grounds, fearing an explosion.

There have been several moments in my career that have reaffirmed my decision to become a journalist.

But the energy and passion in that newsroom Sept. 11, 2001, is what drove me to be a reporter.

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