The 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks is Friday. Radio World is presenting a series in which people share their memories.
Radio World’s Nick Langan shares his memories from that day.
The night before, I probably got about four hours of sleep.
I was a sophomore at Holy Cross High School in Delran, N.J. On Sept. 10, my family had just gotten broadband DSL internet service for the first time. I stayed up late to take full advantage. The voice of James Earl Jones greeted me every time I initialized the applet to connect to Verizon’s service. Until that point, my entire online life had been tethered to dial-up.
I remember that night watching the New York Giants–Denver Broncos Monday Night football game on ABC, a game that in hindsight, felt like the last vestige of a world we were about to leave behind.
Radio was already top of mind for me in those days, even in my teens. I was managing my not-so-legal one-watt FM operation out of my bedroom, WNJL.
The next morning, I boarded the school bus for the 50-minute ride, winding past houses in Florence to pick up classmates en route to Holy Cross.
September weather always delivers. It was, as many have noted over the years, a beautiful morning in the northeast. I remember discussion in the days leading up to Sept. 11 of Hurricane Erin offshore, but it would stay safely out to sea.
I had my pocket radio, which I’d always use with earphones for the ride to and from school. I went through several RadioShack Optimus 12-797 portables during my teenage years, specifically because they featured a digital tuner.
Bill Simpson was filling in the morning drive on WJJZ(FM) in Philadelphia, which I listened to religiously. For at least the first 10 minutes of my ride, before we left Florence, I could pick up New York City signals. I remember the voice of Steve Harris, WQCD’s morning host at the time.
The first period, which began at 8:30 a.m., passed normally. I think it was a religion class.
I walked into second period history class. This would have been after 9:15 a.m., after the second plane struck the south tower.
Mr. Egan had the television in the class turned on, which itself was most unusual. I saw the smoke plume hovering above Lower Manhattan. My naive thought at the time was that he was going to show us some sort of simulation or documentary of what such an attack would look like on New York.
But then he announced what we were seeing was real.
The first thought that came to mind was whether or not any family members were in the city. My dad would occasionally do business with Con Edison, requiring him to make trips to the five boroughs. But he was in his regular office that day. Gratefully, I had no other family members affected.
For the remainder of the school day, our eyes remained glued to the screens, even as we moved through our regular block schedule. The Pentagon was struck. Flight 93 went down. Like everyone else, I remember just worrying about what might happen next.
Sister Gilmary came over the loudspeaker throughout the day to keep us updated — this was, of course, long before anyone had a smartphone in their pocket.
At 2:40 p.m., I boarded the Florence bus to head home and turned on my radio.
No one in Philadelphia, that I recall, was running regular programming. WJJZ was carrying an NBC News feed, as were other Clear Channel stations at the time. I remember how chilling it was to hear the voice of Tom Brokaw on 106.1.
I arrived home, and I remember nothing feeling right. The euphoria of the newfound DSL connection had quickly vanished.
Anxiety and dread hung heavy over the entire autumn. You kept looking for signs of normalcy. But it never fully returned. Something even as subtle as the weather — it was unseasonably warm that entire fall, leading into what still may be the warmest and most snowless winter I’ve experienced living in New Jersey.
Then there were the anthrax letters, which originated at the regional postal center in Hamilton, just 10 miles northeast of us. Then came Nov. 12, two months later, when the TVs went right back on in our classrooms after American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in Queens, making us fear we were reliving the nightmare all over again.
There were wild rumors about crop dusters, and I remember someone on the bus one afternoon claiming a vehicle carrying chemical weapons had been stolen from nearby Fort Dix.
Nothing since has ever quite compared to Sept. 11 and its aftermath. COVID-19 certainly brought its own wave of prolonged anxiety, but for me, it didn’t match that overwhelming dread — to say nothing of the immense loss of life that day.
But as always, I remember keeping a close ear on the radio. On the evening of Sept. 11, I remembered that I wanted to observe exactly when WJJZ returned to its regular programming.
I believe it did so at 7 p.m. that night, which aligned with its “Philadelphia After Hours” evening shift.
Poignantly, and I’ll never forget it, the first song WJJZ played, out of its usual rotation at that time, was “What The World Needs Now,” from Luther Vandross.
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