A biz editor remembers the Sept. 11 attacks

by · September 11, 2006

On Sept. 11, 2001, Louisville Courier-Journal business editor Dan Blake was standing on a street corner in lower Manhattan watching airplanes strike the World Trade Center.

At the time, he was managing editor of U.S. equities for BridgeNews, an international financial news service, which was later purchased by Reuters after a bankruptcy filing.

Blake recalled what it was like to come back to New York. He wrote, “Across Church Street is the corner where I stood that morning, hoping to get to the office in time to get a cup of coffee before a 9 a.m. conference call when the whine of jet engines — much louder than normal — made me look up. The subway stop where I went for cover as debris started falling from the sky is now part of the construction.

“The hole in the sky is really what you notice the most. Those buildings, which were never that attractive, but were still cool to walk past every day, were gone.

“Standing there, my wife choked up, but I was relieved. Like friends and thousands of others who returned to their jobs around the World Trade Center shortly after the attack, I too was able to come back, if only for a short time.”