25 years after 9/11, WVTM 13 journalists recall witnessing history in New York
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. —
Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, current and former journalists at WVTM 13 are reflecting on what they witnessed in New York and what they hope Americans never forget.
For Larry Lawson, WVTM 13’s Assistant News Director and a native New Yorker, the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, changed as he was preparing to leave Manhattan.
“I had a plane ticket leaving at LaGuardia for 11 a.m. I get out of my hotel, I go to the car rental place to deliver my keys. I’m looking up at the TV screen, and I saw the first plane hit the building and I’m like, oh, wow, we’re at war.”
As airports shut down, the roads became the only way out and the only way in for journalists sent to cover the disaster.
Todd Eagle was a young WVTM 13 photojournalist at the time. He drove more than a day to reach Ground Zero.
“You can just see, you know, it was ten, 15 to whatever stories high of just smoke and debris, that’s all. That’s all you could see.”
At the time, Former WVTM 13 reporter Jon Paepcke was working in Columbus, Georgia. He also made the drive north.
“I got very emotional and got kind of teary-eyed trying to describe to them, you’re looking three blocks away at a pile of smoldering debris, knowing that the hundreds of lives are lost in that building crashing down. And you just can’t; you can’t put that into words no matter how hard you try.”
Eagle remembers one man in particular who was looking for his father and facing the impossible task of explaining the loss to a child.
“I get chills right now just talking about it. Just because the way he was talking about it, you know, I mean, you could see the emotion in his eyes, like, how do I come to the grips that I’m never going to see my father again? He’s never going to see his grandfather again.”
Lawson headed to Brooklyn, his home, and watched survivors walking away from what used to be the World Trade Center.
“I parked the car. I’m under the Brooklyn Bridge. I’m watching all these people in soot walking over the bridge from the World Trade Center, and it just hit me hard. And watching those buildings collapse, it just was like, the worst thing ever.”
All three men said there was something powerful that emerged from the monumental tragedy: a country united in grief and determination.
“Everybody was just so unified behind, you know, the loss we had, we had endured and what we were going to in response,” Paepcke said. “I just wish we would never forget that, the patriotism that we all had after what happened. It was so sad that it took that to unify us.”
Twenty-five years later, the memories remain. Those who covered the events of September 11 say the responsibility to remember the victims, first responders and families continues.