Atticus   

Every day when I walked into the five-story 1010 Building at Turner Broadcasting, a row of six television monitors looked down on me from the edge of the exposed stairwell and elevator area of the second floor. Each set was tuned to a different company-owned station: TBS, TNT, TCM, Cartoon Network, Turner South and Boomerang.

But when I walked through the glass doors on Sept. 11, 2001, I noticed each TV showed the same image. It was a skyscraper, with smoke pouring out from floors that appeared to be a fourth of the way down from the top. I wondered whether it was somewhere nearby in Atlanta and kept walking.

Once I got to my cubicle and found my friend and co-worker Todd across the aisle, watching the same picture on the TV on his desk, I looked more closely and realized it was one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. A plane struck it, Todd said.

And then the two of us watched everything unfold over the next few hours. Sometime that afternoon, everybody went home.

I’ll never forget the confusion and feeling of vulnerability on that day. I hope to never forget the families and friends who, before their eyes, lost loved ones.