Bruce Von Stiers

I remember hearing the first report of a plane hitting the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. A woman whose cubicle is a couple away from me at my day job started telling people about it as we got to work. As the reports started coming in, we were all shocked, dazed and then enraged at the events that were unfolding in our nation.

As I write this, the first anniversary of this horrendous event is only fifteen days away. I have just finished looking at a multimedia production that is a tribute to the people and events of September 11. CBS News has put forth a book that is called What We Saw: The Events of September 11, 2001 – In Words, Pictures, And Video. It is a 144 page book that comes with a full-length DVD disc that has news footage of September 11. The book was published by Simon & Schuster.

Reading the stories in the book and watching the news footage on the DVD was a hard thing to do. I thought, hey, no problem. I’ll just read the pages, watch the video and be done with it. It didn’t happen that way. I found myself horrified and incredibly saddened by what I read in the pages of the book. And when I watched the DVD, there was a lump in my throat so big I could hardly swallow and my heart ached once again for those who lost their lives.

The book begins with an Introduction by Dan Rather, anchor of the evening CBS News newscast. Dan gives us some background on the effort by CBS News to “chronicle the early hours, days, and weeks of this seismic jolt.” Dan goes on to say that this book has not been done for the shock factor, rather is an attempt to remind us of the fact that we got to view the “pictures, sounds and emotions that accompanied the attacks” during the ongoing newscasts.

The book then has a two page timeline of events that unfolded on September 11, 2001. After that is a transcript of two telephone interviews that CBS correspondent Bryant Gumbel did while hosting the CBS Morning Show. These two people, Stewart Nurick and Theresa Renaud, were the first of several people that CBS News interviewed that day about the terrible events.

The next piece is an excerpt from an article by Bryan Charles. In this excerpt, Charles tells of how he got out of the building at 2 World Trade Center after the airplane flew into it. Then Jules Naudet tells of filming FDNY’s Engine 7, Ladder 1 crew that day. It was supposed to be a documentary on the firefighters but ended up being a lot more.

The book then move onto written transcripts of what Rather and other correspondents were saying on the air to let the public know what was going on. Pete Hamill, columnist and author, lets us know about trying just to get home that day. He talks about seeing a man’s body tumbling down towards them and then disappearing.

Another excerpt comes from an article by Scott McCartney and Susan Carey. In this excerpt, they tell of how both airlines knew that they had a hijacking situation going on but had no idea what was really happening. They unfold the events and detail what the traffic controllers and airline executives were doing to take action on the hijackings. The book also has an excerpt of the interview with Cynthia Bowers, the GTE Airphone supervisor who talked with Todd Beamer before he and other passengers tried to over take the hijackers on Flight 93.

One of the most wrenching stories in the book is titled A Widow’s Walk. In this story, Marian Fontana recounts for us the events of that day and how her life will never be the same. Her husband Dave was supposed to be coming home from a shift as a firefighter. He never made it. Another, an article by CBS News correspondent Byron Pitts, tells of trying to interview one of the firemen. The guy only stopped for only a minute, asking the reporter to call his wife and then went back out to try to find his missing crew.

The DVD disc has the entire documentary entitled What We Saw. You can either watch it all at once or view selected chapters in the documentary.

The four chapters on the disc are The Witnesses, The Victims, The Heroes and The Survivors. Each chapter has several selections to choose from. In a segment called Narrow Escape, CBS correspondent Carol Marin describes a ball of flame stories high coming straight at them as she and others escaped the building.

A Town Mourns is a segment from Bill Geist who laments about his town Ridgewood New Jersey and how some of its favorite sons and daughters won’t ever be coming home. This segment can be found in The Victims chapter

The Heroes chapter features the full interview with Cynthia Bowers that was in the book text. And City Within A City, Ed Bradley shows us how people from all over the country have came to New York City to help.

The Children of September is a segment of the Survivors chapter. It is a harrowing segment in which a little girl says that she wishes she could do time travel so that her father could be warned not to go to work that fateful day.

There are a total of 21 segments of coverage of September 11 on the DVD disc.

As we move on with our lives, September 11, 2001 will always be with us. What We Saw is an attempt to help us remember what happened and why, without the normal sensationalism that sometime comes from television journalism. It offers no clear solutions and doesn’t preach to us about national security or terrorism. It does show how the events of that day have impacted our lives and the extraordinary efforts of people all over the country to help the nation, specifically in New York and Washington, go through the healing and rebuilding process.

What We Saw is available at retailers like Barnes and Noble. It has a list price of $ 29.95 U.S. You can also order it on line through one of the vendors listed on the Simon & Schuster web site. The web site can be found at www.simonsays.com.