BANGOR, Maine (WABI) – Manhattan may be more than 400 miles from Bangor, but two local educators were just miles away from the World Trade Center when the terrorist attacks happened.
Back in Sept. 2001, the New England School of Communications was a budding independent institution in Bangor.
On the morning of 9/11, NESCOM staff members Rodney Verrill and Mark Nason were tasked with picking up donated equipment from a New York City network.
As they traveled into the city over the Cross Bronx Expressway, Verrill and Nason remember seeing the Twin Towers “billowing black smoke.”
With all nearby bridges instantly shut down, they sat trapped on the highway for nearly seven hours.
They relied on radio reports and a small battery-powered TV inside a parked food truck just to figure out what was going on.
Nason and Verrill say while they were never in direct danger, no one knew what was coming next once they realized it was a terror attack.
“It was just a hard day for us, but I was very aware that, like, we’re gonna leave. We’re gonna get back home in hours. And it’s gonna be a long day for us, but this is the start of years for people, both the literal and the figurative rebuilding,” Nason recalls.
It was during this history-defining moment that made them realize the importance of coming together in moments of crisis, with loved ones and even strangers stuck on a bridge.
“I think it just reminds you how important the people that you work with, the people at home, your family is to you and how precious that is and how quickly it can be taken away,” reflects Verrill.
Nason and Verrill say they’ve used their firsthand experience to teach generations of NESCom students about the vital role media plays during emergencies.
They say these lessons are especially valuable as time goes on, as young people become further and further removed from the tragedy.
For NESCOM, the school would then be incorporated into Husson University by 2014.
Verrill credits partnerships like the one with the New York network for building NESCOM into the communications school it is today.
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