I remember September 11 perfectly.
What I don’t remember is the next day.
I couldn’t tell you a single thing about my Wednesday, September 12, 2001. I know what was happening in the world during the first days after the attacks because I have read the history and followed the politics, but I have no personal memory of what I was doing or thinking.
So I thought it might be interesting to look back at how my local newspaper covered those first days, partly in the hope of jogging my own memory. How did this town handle it? What were people frightened of? What did the adults around me think had just happened?
What I found was fascinating, although not in the way I expected.
The news pages contain roughly what you would expect: Idaho politicians explaining how they intended to protect Idaho, the closure and reopening of the airport, candlelight vigils, interfaith services, and blood drives. Taken together, the stories paint a vivid picture of how one small American town responded to an enormous event occurring thousands of miles away but suddenly intruding upon everyone’s daily life.
The more interesting discovery was on the opinion pages.
Over the course of a month, this small weekly newspaper worked through, in miniature, nearly every question the country would confront after September 11—and in some cases would continue confronting for the next 25 years.
So let me take you on a trip through the pages of the Idaho Mountain Express in the weeks after 9/11.
On September 12, they published an issue that they must have scrambled to redo on Tuesday. The main piece is “America at War.”
Clearly, life is now forever changed.
And we’re off!
