September 11, 2001 is a day that will be remembered with tremendous heartache but it is also a day that launched a wave of patriotism that has been unparalleled.

The staff of Townsquare Media Abilene talk about their memories of that fateful day.

Frank Pain

Jones and I were doing our morning show on Rock 108. Well, it was standard for us to have our studio TV on. The TV was actually behind me. I remember actually spinning my chair around to flip through the channels and happened to land on Fox right when they were showing the first plane crash into the 1st tower. We sat there stunned as if it didn't really happen then all of the sudden the 2nd plane hit. My heart dropped. We both sat there with our mouths dropped open, almost zombie like. Felt like forever, but we finally snapped then started reporting on the attacks on air and remained on air for the rest of the day. All I could think about was my daughter and how I wanted to be with her...but I was at work. I still tear up when I think about all those people that lost their lives and all of those families impacted. Wow.

Chris Sanchez

I remember watching in disbelief, saying "We're at WAR". Made me sad.

Shay Hill

That was a day that music stopped.  We had feeds coming in via Clear Channel that ran news of the event 24/7.

I remember sitting at the intersection of S. 7th and Leggett when Rudy ( & Bailey) started talking about it...I couldn't get here fast enough!

Staci Blubaugh

I was in the Bahamas. We didn’t really understand what was going on with no TV, we just kept hearing “they are attacking America, everywhere”.

Vicki Hurst

I remember the horror I felt for all the people in the building, but the one biggest horror was that my daughter was working for American Airlines at that time, in New York,  and was scheduled to come home on an American Airline flight, and I had no idea if she was okay. She was indeed at Lagordia, sitting on a plane when the first plane went thru.

Chaz McGuire

I was working for a different radio station in our building. I had just gotten to work when the guy that ran the board for our morning show was feeling sick and so I sent him home and ran the board myself. I just happened to look up at the TV, which had the volume turned down, when I saw a BREAKING NEWS story was on and showed one of the towers on fire and smoke all over the place. I immediately turned the TV up and from that point on, was glued to the TV while reports kept coming in. At this time, our engineer came in and a few others and we started watching the live reports and it was then when we saw the other plane hit live on air. I don’t remember if it was before or after, but sometime during, I remember we dumped the morning show and our engineer hooked up a live news feed that we ran on the air for the rest of the day. I’ll never forget how silent everybody was as we watched the news reports.

Rudy Fernandez

I heard the news while broadcasting my morning show, and then a very heavy sadness overcame me, I had to try and keep my composure and keep broadcasting the information as it was coming in. At one point the news went non-stop that we turned on the national network and let them broadcast their feed 24/7. I remember realizing that America was not as safe as I had imagined it and that we are just as vulnerable as a third world country, if not more so in my opinion. I felt as if Americas innocence had been shattered forever on September the 11th. The song from Seals and Crofts kept playing in my head, over and over, that song was  “We Will Never Pass This Way Again”

God I pray that we will never have to pass that piece of history again.

 

The death toll from the attacks stands at 2,977. That's 2,753 killed at the World Trade Center attacks, 184 at the Pentagon, and 40 killed in the United Airlines 93 crash in Pennsylvania.

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