Your videos are so evocative. To think, just a couple of hours later, the world would change. McNeill and Edwin Neumann would narrate the tragedy on NBC radio.
November 22nd, 1963 and September 11th, 2001 both started as normal days. Normal news cycles. The American people going along with their daily lives. Then out of the blue in the blue our lives were turned upside down forever.
On 9/11, what made my heart hurt more than anything was the thought of ordinary people who got up that morning, showered, ate breakfast and kissed their partners and kids goodbye only a couple of hours later, having to face the horrifying choice of burning to death or jumping to their deaths from a thousand feet off the ground. The descriptions of the sounds that accompanied people hitting the streets and sidewalks by first responders was terrible. The memory of the horror of that day has faded somewhat but the pain is still fresh enough I can tap into it at any time the same as the many who can go back to this epic November day. Housewives at home watching soap operas, spray starch and floor wax commercials shocked out of their doldrums by the bulletin placards that flashed on the TV screens. "The first reports indicate President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting..." Just awful...both days.
We are gonna secure the entire city! Except for the hundreds of open windows right on the parade route with a known CIA subject who we will decide to stop watching this week!
