Sept. 11, 2001: A Decade Later – What I Remember, What I Will Not Forget

Sharon Johnson, CIS ’87, is an entertainment producer for CBS News in New York City. In a special feature for UKNow, she shares her memories from Sept. 11, 2001, and reflects the lasting impact of that tragic and historic day.

New York, N.Y. (Sept. 9, 2011) – It is hard to believe that 10 years have passed since that day in September -- not because of the passage of time, but because my memories are so vivid … so stark … and ever-present. It still seems like yesterday.

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I know I am not alone in that feeling. After all, a whole country was watching.

Being a person who allows myself to emotionally feel and accept the ups and downs that occur in life, I had, and still have a hard time wrapping my head around the emotions and opinions aroused by September 11th.

When people, who did not live in New York City on 9/11, ask me what it was like that day I almost always invariably say, "I remember the weather and how absolutely gorgeous it was that morning." I left home for work that morning at 8:20 a.m.; ten minutes later than I should have in order to be in the newsroom at CBS Newspath by 9 a.m. I was already dreading the look my Executive Producer would give me for being late. I dreaded it not only because he is my boss, but also because I have turned him into my surrogate father since my own father, Coy Johnson, passed away in 1996. He was my executive producer at that time and the treatment and outpouring of sympathy, love and concern from all at CBS immediately turned him and the company into family.

However, my fear disappeared the moment I was outdoors. It truly was the most beautiful day I can remember. The sun was shining, but it was not hot. There was a gentle, clean breeze that told me autumn was around the corner and that I had survived another stifling New York City summer. I began my five-block walk to the subway soaking up the beautiful day knowing I would not see it again till the end of my workday.

I even exclaimed aloud "if there ever was a day to play hooky from work, this would be the day."

Once underground and on the subway, my worries about being late for work returned. I remember looking at my watch when the A-Train reached the Chambers Street-World Trade Center stop. Today I find it weirdly coincidental that it was the World Trade Center stop when I checked my watch. It was 8:45 a.m., very close to the time the first tower was hit. In my head I calculated that my arrival time at CBS would be 9:10 a.m. That’s not a major crime in the world of being late for work, but to my executive producer/surrogate father, still unacceptable.

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I exited the subway at Columbus Circle (57th and Broadway) and began walking as fast as I could, determined to cut the "10 minutes late infraction" into a "5 minutes late infraction." I walked briskly not allowing anything to distract my pace nor my attention away from getting to my destination, something that comes natural to those living in New York City.

It was only until I had to stop and wait for a walk signal to cross 9th Avenue that I noticed the echoing sirens. A siren or two is not unusual on a daily basis here, but I realized the number of sirens I was hearing was abnormal. Something had happened. I thought to myself, "is the entire city of New York on fire?" I then overheard someone talking on a cell phone and the word that stood out to me was airplane. I thought a small plane had possibly crashed in the city. I remembered a plane once hit the Empire State Building in the 1940s, so I knew an accident like that was not out of the realm of possibilities.

I walked through the doors at the CBS Broadcast Center and that’s when I discovered what had happened. The television monitors were fixed on a shot of the two towers on fire with a headline explaining two passenger jets crashed into the World Trade Towers. I immediately knew we were at war even if it had yet to be officially declared and even whom it was to be declared against.

I had always feared war as a child, probably more than what was normal. Having a Japanese mother who was 16 years old (and living in Japan) when the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on her country is probably the reason why I worried as much as I did. My mother, Nami, never told me anything about that time in her life. While I was a student at the University of Kentucky, the Commonwealth Journal in Somerset interviewed my mother and she recalled events about her war experience. That is when I learned that no one in her family was killed during the war and that she remembered seeing ashes falling from the sky after the bombings.

I stood in the lobby of CBS a few moments, starring at the monitors trying to accept the fact that New York City was under attack. I then ran upstairs into a bustling newsroom, but bustling with a reverence. It wasn’t a time to be afraid or emotional at what was happening outside, it was time to shift into high gear and go to work. Being in the news industry I am accustomed to seeing raw footage from catastrophes, wars and evidence of genocide that people at home never see. After spending a few years in the business you learn to do the job and leave your emotions, and hopefully, your opinions at the door.

But this time, it was different. It was harder not to be emotional as well as afraid.

I was editing video coming into the CBS building via satellite from Ground Zero when the Pentagon was hit. There was a collective gasp in the newsroom. I thought, “New York City isn’t under attack; the entire country is under attack.” My first instinct was to reach out to my sister, Wanda, who was living in our hometown of Somerset. I called and said I am safe at work and that I should remain safe at CBS. I said those responsible need the media; they want the world to see what they have done so I couldn’t imagine that we would be targeted. I also said if things get worse, if I had to, I will start walking back to Kentucky and that she should start driving north to get me.

To this day I refuse to be terrorized by the events of 9/11. The only change I made in my life due to the attack was to start riding a bike to work to avoid the subway. This is not something I do every day. I still ride the subway to Manhattan frequently. But I can admit the events on 9/11 motivated me to increase my odds of survival should something occur, something that I feared even before 9/11. Before the attacks I hated riding the subway when it would leave Brooklyn and descend into a tunnel under the East River making its way to Manhattan. I am a self-diagnosed borderline claustrophobic. If Christian Laettner happened to be in my subway car in that circumstance, I would take it as a sign that my time on Earth had come to an end.

In the days following the attack on 9/11, I began working 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week. The days began to run together and other than being tired, I do not remember much that first week. Due to the subway closings, I stayed with friends who lived in Manhattan. I’m sure I could have figured out a route to somehow make it home, but it was a comfort to be among loved ones and it was good for them, too. I believe my presence in their home and hearing about my day, and what I had seen, comforted them as well when just down the street a horror was taking place.

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My proudest moment, the most patriotic I have ever felt, was a few weeks after the attack. I was downtown near Ground Zero, and the street was lined with people waving American flags in the air. Everyone was cheering and yelling encouragements as emergency vehicles made their way up and down the street. It was a gesture of thanks to those who were risking their lives and health. I felt an entire city surge with pride and determination to overcome this attack and to even possibly thrive after it. I felt strength in those New Yorkers surrounding me and I, for the first time in my five years of living in the city, felt like one of them.

Yes, I will always be a Kentuckian at heart. But at that moment I revised a quote from the film Sabrina to suit the occasion for me. In the film Audrey Hepburn quoted Gertrude Stein’s "America is my country and Paris is my hometown," and I mentally changed it to "Kentucky is my home and now, New York City is my hometown." With the pride and determination I felt from those New Yorkers I knew and even antagonistically sent a mental message to those responsible, "You definitely hit the wrong city because you will not, you cannot defeat this."

I will never forget that I am lucky to be an American, to live in this country when there are so many people in this world suffering daily from hunger and tyrannical regimes. I will always remember that if my mother, who came from a country at war with America, who witnessed ashes falling from the sky caused by U.S. bombs, could then become a citizen of that country, come to love it, come to love Kentucky and yes, to even become one of the many rabid Kentucky Wildcat basketball fans, then this world holds a wealth of possibilities for passion, love, forgiveness and hopefully, even peace.

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It was a gorgeous fall day in New York, the kind of weather you don't forget … I will forever remember it … it still seems like yesterday.

Click here for information on events at UK to remember the 10th anniversary of September 11. Click here for WUKY’s special coverage of September 11.