TWO DAYS

Eight years ago, that ii-fated Tuesday morning, the Mark Bros morning show was in the studio as usual, yakkin about stuff that probably was not that important. I do remember that the main focus of the discussion that morning was Eddie Mac of the Broncos, who had broken a leg that Monday night game, in ironically, New York. It was early , rolling into the 6:30 am half hour, when a listener told us "that we'd better get CNN on"...quickly turning on the TV we all watched, jaws agape as the smoke billowed from that first tower strike. Trying to figure out what was going on like everybody else. Then, minutes later, the second tower. And then...the Pentagon. And the air was out of the room..we switched over to the network news feed and all stood there as the towers fell and that enormous dust and debris cloud engulfed the streets. No one said anything.

I remember later that day too..coming home to my east side house..where normally you could hear planes flying overhead taking off and landing at the airport. The silence was deafening and chilling. Except for the sound of the military jets high above, all was quiet. People were in their homes watching the endless loops of the crashing towers and horrendous loss of life. The next day on KKFM was somber and news filled and we spent the day taking calls and letting people tell their stories which was emotionally difficult by the end of the show. Finally on 9/13 we decided we needed to get out and the entire Citadel cluster of radio stations had a massive fund raiser in front of our stations ..where listeners responded like nothing I have ever seen or likely will never see again. close to $500,000 raised and more importantly people wanted to GET OUT and come and talk and touch other people. Still to this day the emotions of that day are my strongest and most poignant of my entire radio career.

These days with the yelling and the uncivil behavior we have witnessed in the past few months , it would be nice to get back to the feelings of those TWO DAYS.

mark stevens