Tim Engstrom, Managing Editor

I showered, shaved, skipped breakfast and got out of the door and into my car on my way to work as the editor of the Daily Record in Ellensburg, Wash.

Sept. 11, 2001, in the Kittitas Valley was bright and shiny with no wind. It was 6:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

I turned on the radio and listed to Northwest Public Radio, the Pacific Northwest’s version of Minnesota Public Radio, as usual on my one-mile drive to work. President Bush was in Sarasota, Fla., saying there had been an “apparent terrorist attack on our country.”

I thought it was merely a drill of some sort until after, when the announcer with National Public Radio came on and began describing what was happening in New York. Two planes had slammed into the World Trade Center.

It would be a big day at work. The Daily Record had an afternoon newspaper that had a 10:30 a.m. news deadline with a Goss Community press in the next room. This allowed our copies to reach the lunch crowd. Usually.

On this day, things would be different. When Publisher Bill Kunerth, who now is the publisher at the Idaho State Journal in Pocatello, arrived at the building, he and I decided to increase the number of pages so we could get more news about the attacks into this edition.

Staff from news, composing and advertising stood around a little color television in the newsroom that had the words Ellensburg Daily Record faintly burned into the glass from the cathode ray. The newspaper at one time had run the channel on the cable television in town that was just words scrawling across a screen. At the top of all these words, never changing, was Ellensburg Daily Record. This little TV set had been on that channel nonstop for about a decade.

On this day, we saw replay after replay of the towers being struck. But they hadn’t yet fallen. And a plane struck the Pentagon.

This was a big deal, locally and nationally, yet we also were focused on finishing news from the day before. One of stories was a family’s house had burned down, which normally is big news in a community of Ellenburg’s size. Ellensburg was about 15,000 then. (It’s 18,000 now.)

Meanwhile, I had to fetch a mugshot of a guy who had a guest column on our opinion page. The guy had been hard to pin down for a picture, and the afternoon prior I had told him I would get his photograph in the morning. I hopped in my car and drove west out of town on the Vantage Highway about two miles. I just wanted the opinion page done and out of the way so I could focus on the news.

I got there and could see through his sliding glass door that he was watching TV. He came outside, I snapped his photo, and then he told me had just seen one of the towers fall. He then wanted to go on and on and on. Was he lonely?

In the back of my mind I was thinking, “You are eating up the time of the newspaper editor on the morning our country has been attacked. Can you maybe reconsider choosing this as a time to offer opinions on what’s wrong with the country?” But I was polite and found a courteous time to separate myself from him and get back to the office.

I got a call from Pacific Northwest AP Bureau Chief Dale Leach in Seattle. He said the AP was offering photos at no charge to members that were not subscribers to its photo services. Great, we’ll take it! We needed art. He sent an email with a selection of photos and captions.

A plane crashes in Pennsylvania. The other tower collapses. Airplanes are grounded. Airports are shut down.

We put the local fire story and photo at the bottom of the front page. We held other stories. We used the top three-quarters of the page for stories on the attacks, along with several inside pages. However, newer news kept breaking, and I rearranged the front page several times. The plus side was the Daily Record would be able to produce a newspaper about the attacks on the same day as the attacks. Not many newspapers did that. The down side was worrying whether more news would occur after we sent the pages to the press. Would I have a “Stop the presses!” situation?

We sent the pages. We watched that old TV set.

News continued, but fortunately, no more attacks. No more deaths.

The newsroom staff and I met to discuss the Sept. 12 edition. Pat Muir was sent to the schools to write about the “teachable moment” when history happens. Photographer David Dick went with him. Andrea Pascoe (now Paris) spoke with local officials and law enforcement. Mike Johnston spoke with locals who had friends and relatives in New York.

If I could do that Sept. 11, 2001, edition again, I would bump that fire story and photo to the inside and make the entire front page about the attacks. As important as a house fire is, the attacks were far greater. It’s just that newspapers hadn’t had to handle news of that magnitude in decades.

For the Sept. 12, 2001, edition, the Daily Record was all about the attacks. We had national and local-angle stories relating to the attacks and stunning photos. The opinion page was 100 percent attack-related, too. Yet, we still cared about other local news. We caught up with the family that had lost its home in the fire later that week.

I’ll never forget the comment one of the reporters made on Sept. 13. Andrea asked me if this whole fiasco was over with now and can we get back to normal. I said I don’t think normal will be the same and said we will be writing about what happened on Tuesday for years to come.

Sarah Stultz, City Editor

As I was seated in the middle of my 12th-grade Advanced Placement English class in Roanoke, Va., a woman knocked on the door of our classroom and explained that something horrible had happened.

We were in one of the two trailers-turned-classrooms at the school, and if I recall correctly it was my first class of the day.

The woman told us that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center’s north tower, and my teacher, Mrs. Pufko, turned on the TV.

A senior in high school, I wasn’t quite sure what to think.

I don’t think I had much time to think actually, because shortly after we turned on the TV, another plane crashed into the south tower.

We sat in silence staring at the TV.

The memories that follow are kind of a blur. I can’t remember how long we sat there like that or if we watched the footage in any of our other classes. I can’t remember if we watched footage of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon just a few hours away or of the plane that crashed near Shanksville, Pa.

All I can remember to this day is the uneasy feeling I had in my stomach as we went on with the rest of the day.

The next day, I remember telling my dad, the most avid of the newspaper readers in our home, that I wanted to keep the copy of our local paper, The Roanoke Times, that day.

I knew this was going to be something I wanted documented.

I pull that paper out periodically to remind me what took place.

Andrew Dyrdal, Sports Editor

I woke up the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, as an unpatriotic 14-year-old who pledged allegiance only to girls, sports and video games. That changed at 8:46 a.m.

I was in eighth grade and in Bernie Zimmerman’s math class when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Mr. Z stood up and quietly flipped on the TV as smoke billowed out of the north tower. I thought the building had simply caught fire and was shocked to find out a commercial plane caused the damage. A pilot had fallen asleep or lost control — it was an accident, right? That’s when the second plane hit.

I had never in my life heard of the term “terrorism” until that morning. The most dramatic events that had taken place on American soil in my lifetime were the Columbine shooting and Oklahoma City bombing. Americans killing Americans. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would attack us from elsewhere.

As I sat in Mr. Z’s class the images on TV played out like a disaster movie. The Pentagon is hit, the south tower collapses, Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania and the north tower collapses. I began to question my own safety. Was I safe in school? Would these terrorists come to Albert Lea?

I don’t remember much beyond Mr. Z’s classroom. Almost every teacher that day at Southwest Junior High School had the news on, and we didn’t get much work done.

It took me years to compound what happened that day, and I still don’t completely understand. How could anyone? I do know that Sept. 11 changed my life forever.

Already a worrisome teenager, a routine trip to the Mall of America was filled with anxiety, and I wondered, if the War on Terror lasted until I was 18 would I get drafted? I was selfish but I learned to love my country, too. The next summer I visited Washington D.C.

Michelle Haacke, Marketing Executive

Eerie. That’s how I recall the feeling that seemed to sweep over everyone I knew on Sept. 11, 2001.

My day started as any normal day: driving the 20-minute commute from my apartment to my job at an advertising agency in Des Moines, Iowa. I was listening to the same morning radio show I always listened to. It was no surprise, the DJ at the helm seemed to have some bizarre prank going on…a plane flying into the Twin Towers, people running scared, mayhem and destruction in New York City. Weird prank, I thought to myself, and not one bit funny. I put in a CD.

When I pulled into the parking lot at work, there were several cars in their spots, nothing abnormal. I realized something wasn’t quite right when I walked in the doors. There was no buzz of activity, no sound, nobody in the cubicles. Very strange.

I walked to the second floor, where I heard the TV in the conference room. Nearly 25 of my co-workers were glued to the program, their faces frozen in shock. Nobody said a word. Then I realized, that was no prank on the radio. It was real. What was going on?

We watched for several minutes — what felt like hours — before we began shuffling back to our desks to start working. But not much work was done — the conversation was all about the attacks. Over the next couple of hours, we received an array of emails from associates across the nation, asking us to keep specific people in our prayers who had loved ones working in or near the Twin Towers.

Were other cities in danger, as well? Was our city in danger? The Midwest had always felt so safe. That was just one of many questions looming in the air. Because the company had offices and accounts around the nation, corporate shut all of the branch offices down before noon.

A few of us gathered at our favorite lunch spot, which was full of people glued to the TVs. Those TVs sucked everyone in because none of us understood, and most of us were too young to understand any sort of attacks hitting this great nation. After lunch, I drove home, puzzled, scared and sad — so sad for all of those families I didn’t know and their tremendous losses.

The gas tank in my car was close to empty but I decided to forgo filling it up when I saw that the gas station had a line of cars extending a two-block range. People scared of gas shortages or spikes in prices? I went home and walked to the gas station to get a special edition of the Des Moines Register that had published that day, to try and gain a shred of understanding. I soaked in the TV reports and called my grandpa — a World War II veteran — to get his insight on the attacks.

While the days ahead would share more details and lead to some understanding about the events of 9/11, I will never understand the hatred that could lead to such an event. And, from that day forward, I truly understood what a great nation we live in.

Garrett Wampler, Sports Writer

It is hard to express what Sept. 11 means to me, I had just turned 11 and I was interested in world politics just about as much as the prospect of being a journalist, which hadn’t crossed my mind at that age.

Like many Americans, I will forever carry with me the memories of the events of that day and what I was doing as they unfolded.

My seventh-grade year at West York Area Middle School in York, Penn., had just begun. The swirl of being in a brand-new school with new teachers and new friends filled my mind, without any other worry in the world.

The school was located within two blocks from the York Fair, which every year allows students to get in the fair for free on Tuesdays. Our school district has always been gracious enough to make the “fair day” a half-day of school.

On the morning of that fateful day, I didn’t go to school. Instead I stayed home for the three hours I would have sat behind a desk and awaited the time that my stepdad, Charlie, would take me and my brother to the fair.

At 8:46 a.m., Charlie called for me from my room. The excitement and the prospect of going to the fair early ended when my eyes broke on the TV. There on the set was the definite sign of horror as the black smoke rolled out of one of the Twin Towers.

I’ll never forget the next words that came out of Charlie’s mouth, “Remember this, this is history you’re watching.”

At the time there was no mention of a terror attack and it was thought to be an accident, at least from my eyes. Then as I was getting ready to head back to my bedroom and continue on with whatever I was doing, I watched as the second plane flew into the TV set and collided with the second tower.

As an 11-year-old, I had no idea what the World Trade Center was or what they did, but I knew something was definitely wrong. At that point I stayed and watched all the events of the morning unfold. From the Pentagon strike to the American Airlines flight 93 going down less than two hours away in Shanksville, Penn.

I was shaken, and then the unthinkable happened; the Towers crumbled. Needless to say that many of the images of the day are burned into my mind, over the next few weeks I would learn all about what these building meant and stood for in America.

Over the last 10 years of my life I have seen America come together, but never more so than after the Twin Towers fell. Every generation seems to have a moment like this, that they will remember forever. For my grandparents it was the JFK assassination. For my parents it was the Three Mile Island meltdown and for myself it is 9/11.

I have since visited the Pentagon, where things have been rebuilt but the past has not been forgotten. I have also been to the area in Shanksville, a somber memorial in the middle of a farmer’s field.

I will never forget and always remember.

Ed Shannon, Correspondent

Sept. 11, 2001, was just another morning just before deadline in the newsroom here at the Tribune. This suddenly changed when a person came into our part of the building and said, “You guys better turn on your television. Some plane just hit a big building out in New York City.”

We turned on the television set and watched as the news footage showed this tall building burning on top. Our assumption, and the news focus by the television folks, was that this was an accident. After all, as someone commented, a U.S. Air Corps bomber struck the Empire State Building in the fall of 1945.

The newsroom staff was watching the scenes on the television screen and waiting to see what evolved. Not long after, as we and folks all over the nation were trying to figure out what was going on with this reported accident, another scene unexpectedly came up on the screen. In just a flash of a second another aircraft went by the first building and struck the second of the Twin Towers. And that’s when we were fully convinced that this was no accident. What took place that morning was a deliberate act of violence that has had consequences even today.