OP-ED, Sept. 18
By: Helen Pettigrew
I woke up Tuesday morning to an eerie sound outside my Manhattan apartment window silence.
And then came the sirens. They began their wailing just after 9 a.m. and streamed south through my neighborhood for more than 12 hours.
I had been listening drowsily to National Public Radio when I heard of the first plane crash. By the time the second plane hit the World Trade Center, I was wide awake and in front of the television. I knew that somehow, I had to get down there.
I left my job at The Packet a month-and-a-half ago and moved to New York to study at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I now live on 124th Street more than 5 miles north of the World Trade Center.
As I watched the tragedy unfold on television, I felt an enormous conflict between the human in me and the reporter in me. The human in me was horrified, horribly saddened and terrified by the incident, but in the back of my mind, the reporter in me felt an urge to rush out and cover the event. I was angry at myself for thinking of reporting in such a crisis.
By the time the bridges and tunnels to the city were closed off, and Manhattan stood alone, disconnected from the rest of the continent, I was too afraid to leave my apartment. The radio went dead WNYC, the NPR affiliate, broadcast from the World Trade Center towers and the phone lines were flooded. I sat glued to the television, struck by the irony that I needed so much to see this coverage other reporters were supplying.
In the early afternoon, I walked 10 blocks to the nearest hospital to donate blood, but was turned away with everyone else. Outside, hundreds of people were walking silently up the street, sweaty in business suits or holding their children’s hands.
I stood in long lines to buy food, and tried to find money, but all the ATM machines were dry.
I walked like a zombie for the rest of the day, trying to come to terms with what had happened and still feeling that I was neglecting my duties to report on the situation.
That night, the world outside my window was still quiet. There were few trains on the elevated subway tracks next to my apartment. It had taken me weeks to get used to the loud rumbling of their approaching wheels at night. Now, my roommates and I closed the windows, to keep out the silence and the stench of burnt rubber and concrete that was blowing up from the smoldering wreckage more than 5 miles away.
I did go downtown. Since Tuesday, I have been downtown three times. I walked through the deserted streets at rush hour. I saw a woman with two girls taping posters of a missing man along the walls and others talking to the media about lost loved ones.
Seeing the smoking gap in the skyline and cheering on volunteers along the West Side Highway forced me to acknowledge the reality of Tuesday’s tragedy and helped me begin to heal.
One dean at the journalism school told a group of students grappling with similar issues that we are not just journalists we are recorders of history. But for now, I take solace in the fact that I am also just a student. I don’t have to report on this incident. One day I will be sent out to talk to victims, survivors and rescuers, but now, I can be a person and mourn with the rest of the city.
At Union Square, I listened to a high school band play patriotic songs. I have participated in candlelight vigils, and watched people tie yellow ribbons to a fence on Canal Street. I can’t get the words to "Amazing Grace" out of my head, and found myself singing it out loud while I was walking home.
For the time being, I continue to call the blood donation hot line, I follow the news, I shudder when planes fly overhead, and I keep on singing.
It’s all I can do.
Helen Pettigrew, a former Packet reporter, is a student at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

