Nothing Will Ever Be The Same: Covering 9/11 In Philadelphia

Posted Sep 11, 2011 by Howard Altman

Updated Sep 11, 2011 at 08:41 AM

It was the most beautiful morning.

As I emerged from the subway and made my way down to Old City, I couldn’t help but notice the crisp, fresh air. No smog. No humidity.

Just a spectacular start to the day.

I was heading into the City Paper office earlier than usual, to put the finishing touches on a story about how Philadelphia was about to play host to leaders of nearly each of Africa’s 53 nations. I arrived at the office shortly after 8 a.m. to find a few other City Paper colleagues already in. It was deadline day and we had a special edition with a fine cover planned of an emerging artist named Ursula Rucker.

I said my good mornings, settled in at the desk of my office, which had a grand view of Old City’s hottest strip, turned on my computer and began finishing the lengthy tome about opportunities for growth presented by the coming Corporate Council on Africa’s convention.

I didn’t get very far.

Just before 9 a.m., there was a commotion in the conference room. At first I tried to ignore it, because, well, in a newspaper, commotions happen.

But then I heard someone mention that it appeared a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

I ran out of my office and joined the others. We sat around the conference table, looking at the gaping hole in the North Tower, seeing the smoke pouring out and listening to the CNN commentators speculate.

Maybe it was a tourist plane.

A horrible accident.

At 9 a.m., that seemed plausible. After all, with so many planes flying around Manhattan, it was possible.

Nearly three minutes later, at 9:02:54 a.m., we all knew there was no mistake as we watched in horror a Boeing 767 slam into the South Tower.

“We’re under attack,” I said aloud.

But even in that moment of stark realization, I could not comprehend what would happen next.

I thought of my mom, who worked in midtown. My brother-in-law, who worked next to the WTC.  My wife and kids, who were homeschooling, had no tv on and likely no idea what was happening.

After staring at the screen for a few more minutes, other thoughts took over.

Philadelphia, just 90 miles from New York, has some of America’s most important landmarks. Independence Hall. The Liberty Bell. It is also ringed by key targets – nuclear reactors. Remembering what a source on the bomb squad told me, that one of these days, the jihadis might come after these places, I scrambled together a plan.

Get as many people in as many places around Philly and capture as much of what was happening as we could. Get dispatches from colleagues in New York. For a minute, I pondered heading up to New York myself. That’s where I was born. I watched the towers go up.

But as the guy in charge of the editorial staff, responsible not just for getting out the news, but also, ultimately, for the lives of our staff and their families, I knew I had to stay. Besides, we were an alt weekly that thrived on local. I knew we could count on folks up north. Our mission was to blanket Philly. At this point, we had no idea what was going to happen next.

The urgency increased shortly after 9:30 a.m., when the news broke about the Pentagon being hit at 9:37 a.m.

We had to get someone in DC.

Then I called my wife. Told her about the attack. She was concerned. Wanted me to come home.

Don’t go to Independence Hall she warned, knowing, without my telling her, that’s where I was headed.

But she knew me well. There was news breaking. Big news.

After making sure the wheels were in motion, I ran out the door, to the U.S. Customs House next door, a federal building where frightened employees streaming out had no idea whether they were the next target. In retrospect, that may seem silly, but at 9:46 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001, anything was possible.

After talking to folks at the Customs House, I headed over to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.

As I walked the short distance, I called my buddy on the bomb squad.

“The bomb squad is on alert, everything here is like Defcon 8,” Jack Keen told me. “I really can’t tell you whether there are any plans to shut down Independence Hall. That’s up to the Park Service. But we are on the roll.”

When I got to the park, people were still milling about, confused. Some people were scared, others defiant.

Soon both the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall were closed. Security was heavy.

By the time I got back to the office, sometime shortly after 10 a.m., I learned that this day is worse than I knew.

At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed.

Gone.

Even seeing the replays it was incomprehensible.

Then, four minutes later, a fourth plane nosedived into the ground on the other side of the state, near a town called Shanksville.

To be honest, the rest of the day is kind of a blur, as I navigated between being a reporter, being an editor, being a comforter, a friend, a husband, father and son.

At 11 a.m., just to emphasize how precarious things were in Philly, Mayor John Street held a press conference in Room 202.
He condemned the attacks as “cowardly, shameful acts” and announced the city’s own emergency plan: All government buildings, airports, schools, libraries and museums will shut down at noon. All police, fire and rescue personnel will be called from home and vacation and put into the work rotation. Local national parks and monuments will be shut down until further notice.

Ten years later, I can’t remember if I was at the presser. The quotes come from the story we published about the day.

As Tuesday wore on, I was reasonably sure that my mom would be safe, having worked several miles north of the disaster area. But I still hadn’t heard from her. And we hadn’t heard from my brother-in-law.

I told City Paper staffers that if they wanted to go home to their families, there was no shame. In fact, it was a good idea. I think nearly everyone stayed.

At some point, we had to turn our attention to what we would put on the cover. Obviously, the previously planned, and beautiful picture of Ursula Rucker was going to be scrapped. Despite the pleas of our arts folk, who urged me to keep some image of Rucker on the front, I made an executive decision.

No Rucker. Not on this cover.

But we needed an image. We needed a headline.

JESUS ##### CHRIST I wrote down on a piece of paper and showed it to my publisher, Paul Curci, who was meeting with a Ted Rall, a well-known cartoonist and writer, who had come down from New York to talk about some newspaper venture.

I was mostly kidding, needing a light moment in a freaked out day.

Months later, Rall would capture that meeting in a cartoon in a book about the day published by cartoonists around the world.

We tossed out a number of ideas. Finally, managing editor Frank Lewis hit on something that, from everything we were seeing, both in Philadelphia and around the world, really made sense.

NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME.

It worked. Using an image we were able to grab of the burning towers, which by now no longer existed, we threw the words over the picture.

Nah.

We moved around the words. Moved around the picture.

Nah. Not really befitting an alt weekly that would be out two days after a straight shot of the towers would be on every paper around the world (except a paper called the Vindicator, in Ohio, which, puzzlingly, showed a picture of a fuel tanker truck at a gas station. But I digress).

Then, art director Brian Hogan earned his keep for the rest of eternity. It was a simple solution.

He covered the image in an alarming shade of red.

It was, and remains, brilliant. (I had some contacts in the journalism world and, sure that this was a winner, put it in the right hands. Our front page wound up on a poster of 25 front pages from around the world. It was the only alt weekly, and, if memory serves me, the only non-daily among giants like the New York Times and Washington Post. It also wound up in a book of front pages from that day, which is how I know about the Vindicator cover. That was in there too).

The rest of the day is a complete blur. I may have darted in and out of the office. I know I spoke frequently with my wife and eventually to my mom. My brother-in-law, forced to flee a damaged building was still MIA. (I learn, a day later, that he was safe). Sometime around midnight, I shuffled out of the office, worn and still dazed, and walked past the Liberty Bell, which was shut down and heavily guarded. The security patrol gave me a wary gaze, a disheveled man in a beard, hauling a bag, at this late hour. I made it to the train station for the last train of the night and looked around.

All I could see where places to hide bombs.

Jim Barry, Daniel Brook, Jenn Carbin, Daryl Gale, Mary F. Patel, Gwen Shaffer, Rick Valenzuela and David Warner, who was in New York on an arts fellowship, did an amazing job of capturing the most horrific day of my lifetime in the city where this nation was born. We also had some vivid dispatches from New York and DC as well. Lewis, taking calls from the field and files from the office (before smart phones, no one had laptops) stitched it all together into a riveting, moment-by-moment narrative.

The entire staff came together, artists, photographers, copy editors, and people who I am sure I am forgetting in my newsheimer-addled memory (so please forgive me) to produce a body of work that, as I re-read it the other day, makes me extremely proud.

If you want to know what was going on in Philadelphia on Sept. 11, 2001, take a read for yourself. It is long. It is imperfect. But it is by far the best living history of Philadelphia on a day that would see nearly 3,000 killed, launch us into wars that would kill another 6,200 U.S. service men and women – and counting – thousands of Afghans and Iraqis and, earlier this year, the man who set it all off, Usama bin Laden.

A generation has grown up at war.

We are spending hundreds of billions to fight at a time of diminished resources, a wobbly economy and an uncertain future.

Our concept of freedom and liberty and security has been challenged.

The fellowship that existed in the hours and days after the attacks has disappeared into a clamorous, cantankerous, cacophony of clashing ideologies.

The headline, sadly, proved prophetic. For better and worse.

Nothing Will Ever Be The Same.