Mine isn\u2019t a remarkable 9\/11 story, but the memory is vivid.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in the office of the Allegheny County Elections Division, pulling campaign finance paperwork, when I heard a radio report that a plane struck the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh is complicated. Your news shouldn\u2019t be shallow.<\/p>\n
Get deeply reported local journalism that asks hard questions, explains powerful systems and stays with the story. Sign up for Public Source\u2019s newsletter today.<\/p>\n
Then another. Then the Pentagon.<\/p>\n
I hurried to City Hall. There, word circulated that another plane was coming our way. (It had already crashed near Shanksville, but city officials didn\u2019t know that.) Council President Bob O\u2019Connor gaveled the council meeting early.<\/p>\n
By 11 a.m., my employer at the time, the Pittsburgh City Paper, told its staff to go home. I hopped on my bicycle, and pedaled past hundreds of cars creeping outbound \u2014 an early rush hour under a perfect early autumn sky.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, nearly 3,000 perished. I was fortunate not to lose a loved one, but joined many Americans in mourning the end of a simpler, safer era. I would soon learn terms like \u201cracial and ethnic profiling\u201d and \u201ctotal information awareness,\u201d which continue to echo today.<\/p>\n
Twenty-five years later, 9\/11 is one of those milestones \u2014 like the COVID-19 shutdowns \u2014 in our national journey and many personal journeys.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh\u2019s Public Source wants Southwestern Pennsylvanians\u2019 thoughts on the reverberations of 9\/11. Share yours, and we\u2019ll consider publishing them. (Contact information is required, but we won\u2019t publish that.)<\/p>\n
\n\tMORE STORIES\n<\/p>\n
Help us continue telling stories like this one.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re Pittsburgh\u2019s Public Source, an independent, nonprofit newsroom. That means we rely on donations from readers like you to help us report accurate, timely and impactful stories for the Pittsburgh region \u2014 available to everyone without paywalls. <\/p>\n
Everyone deserves access to credible information to understand and help shape the region they call home, which is why we work hard everyday to deliver fact-checked stories on education, environment, health, local government and more.<\/p>\n
We’ve seen our journalism prompt widespread change<\/a> in the Pittsburgh region \u2014 but none of it would be possible without the support of our community. If you found this story valuable, consider “paying it forward” by making a gift today<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mine isn\u2019t a remarkable 9\/11 story, but the memory is vivid. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5466,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-261929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-leadstorynoshow","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}