I was working for WREX channel 13 in Rockford, Illinois, as a local television photographer for the newsroom. I had responsibilities to gather footage for the 5 and 10 O:Clock broadcasts. Many times they'd send us out and gather bytes for the reporters and sometimes the reporters were to busy to interview, they'd have us get what we could for the packages. I was happy doing all this, I had dreamed this was just a foot in the door for what was to come. Maybe CBS, ABC, or NBC. I'd be working along side some heavy hitters, like Peter Jennings or Dan Rather. Heather Pick, the news anchor for WREX, was the one person I'd looked up to. She at the time was pregnant and had gone into remission from her cancer. She told me that I had what it took to be in the news business. On one assignment, I helped her get the info that she needed for her package. She told me to question the doctor in the locker room she was doing the feature on, she said, he might not talk to her because she is a woman and he may talk to me.
On the Morning of 9/11, I was woke by the shrill of the phone. It was Maggie, the News Director. She stated, have you not been watching TV? I replied, no what's up? The phone went dead for a moment. In a panic voice. The Twin Towers have been hit by a plane. I could not believe what I was hearing. This was a moment that I could never have dared to imagine. I went to the television and turned it on. I could see the plane and the anchor on the morning program, saying the second tower has just been hit by a second plane. Oh, what horror. What disbelief. I could not quite comprehend the situation. I heard the voice on the other end. "You need to get down to the station, now."
The day seemed to go by quite fast, I was sent out to the airport to get shots of the planes landing and to get bytes from the passengers stranded at the airport. Flights had been suspended throughout the country and the planes in the sky had to land where they were. I heard that flights coming from overseas were diverted to Canada, while planes in the US landed at every airport available. The Rockford airport was one of those, usually the tarmac was empty, but planes filled the runway.
Maggie was trying to get people out to Chicago to O'hare and get footage of what was happening. The National Guard had been called in and the airports had been a stronghold in the wake of this disaster. A live truck had been sent and could only get about a mile from the airport. Fear still loomed over the country that another plane was going to hit Chicago at the Sears Tower. Then I heard another plane was downed in Pennsylvania. The passengers had overtaken it and it had crashed in a field. She still wanted footage from inside the airport.
Jerrod, the reporter and I were sent to the airport by bus. The buses were still running, picking up people stranded at O'hare. She charted one of those buses for us so she could see what was happening there. We took the buss and made it inside Chicago's main airport. As the buss pulled in we could see the uniformed men with their guns making their rounds. I could feel the tension in the air and feared the worst was still to come. It reminded me of a Russian spy movie and we were in Gorky Park, waiting for the soldiers to start shooting. The bus driver stopped the buss and we exited off the buss. Jerrod, was asking some of the soldiers questions about the day. The answers we got were that we could not get any footage of the happenings at the airport. This did not look to promising for a story.
The sun was going down and the country was in chaos, not knowing what tomorrow would bring. I was assigned with Maurice to do a live shot at 10 at a church. The church was a Christian Church that was the main church for Middle Eastern Christians. We had been out getting bytes from locals when we were sent there. The day had been long and I had not stopped for any kind of break. We made it to the church, I needed to find a spot to set up the truck to send out the feed. As I was seeking the place to stop, I heard a crash. The forks on the top of the truck had smacked the overhang of the church. The loud crash distracted me and I smacked the side of the church. What a loud bang it must have sounded inside. The parishioners must have thought they were being targeted, a few of them popped out to see what was going on. I radioed back to the station of my situation. I could hear Maggie in the background, there goes our live shot. A second truck was dispatched, however it was not a live truck. The other truck was on it's way to Ground Zero, with Heather and her crew.
We had to make the best of this candle light vigil. I took some great shots of everyone there and even got some bytes for the 10 O:Clock. It wasn't as good as a live shot could have been.
NYPD, the NYFD, and the President telling us that he was going to get Bin Laden. The world felt as if it stopped turning.
I was unable to keep my job, the times a head were tough and going to get tougher with the recession in play.
In November 2008, I heard about a job at some local television station in Oregon. I needed to have a tape of my work. I found Heather in Ohio. She was working as the morning anchor at a Columbus station. The bio on the station gave her email. I emailed her; however, received no response. It was just as well, I thought. Two months later I found that she had passed away. The cancer came out of remission and she fought it til the very end. I watched her on You tube, reliving her moments with cancer. She passed the same month that I emailed her.
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