September 11, 2001 started out as a very nice sunny fall day. Only two weeks before I took my three oldest kids into New York City to see a Mets game. We took the ferry from Weehawken across the Hudson River to Manhattan. The view of the World Trade Center and the way the twin towers reflected on the river that afternoon was very beautiful. Little did we know everything would change two weeks later. On the morning of the attacks the phone in my office rang. It was my long time friend Mayer Fistal from West Milford. He told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I still had one more hour left to be on the air so I turned on the black and white T.V. in the studio. Then watched in horror as a second plane crashed into the towers on live T.V. Moments later we stopped playing our cheerful mix of love songs and commercials. Until 4PM I was on the air with the late Vince Thomas and our News Director Steve Spadafino. Just after 10 o'clock we took a chilling call from a construction worker on his way home from Jersey City. He saw both planes hit the towers. When I asked him to describe the planes that hit the towers he said they were large passenger planes. Throughout the day the late Pastor Ed Casey from Stockholm United Methodist Church prayed for 911 victims and their families live on WSUS. Sussex County Emergency Management Coordinator Skip Danielson called in regularly to tell us where Sussex County first responders were heading. Most of them were going to Liberty State Park in Jersey City to help people being evacuated from lower Manhattan. All of us wanted to keep people in our listening area as calm as possible. We kept saying our listeners in northwest New Jersey were not in danger. The next day students from Sussex Tech came to school to prepare sandwiches for first responders at ground zero. We also learned 31 year old Jeremy Glick from West Milford was one of the passengers who rushed the flight 93 highjackers. Jeremy died with all his fellow passengers when their plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Port Authority police officer Bob Cirri was a friend of mine growing up in Hudson County. He was one of the thousands who gave his life that day. Two years later I had the honor of speaking at the dedication ceremony for Sussex County's 911 Memorial at S.C.C.C. Sussex County's official 911 Remembrance Ceremony will take place at Sussex County Community College today at 6 P.M.
Source: New Jersey Herald