Sept. 11, 2001 in the newsroom of the Bucks County Courier Times in Levittown, Pa., is a blur of victims' names, and the stunned faces of their loved ones.

We knew we'd have deaths. Bucks County is an Amtrak-hour from Lower Manhattan, and we had reported previously how hundreds of county residents commuted to New York City for work.

I was a general assignment reporter back then and, even before the towers collapsed, took several calls from people who had family or friends working at the World Trade Center.


They were desperate to know if we knew anything.

The publisher decided we'd put out an "Extra."

I scrambled with other reporters -- out to Lower Makefield Township to the home of Vic Saracini, the pilot of United Airlines Flight 175, the second plane that rammed into the towers. The police had blocked the street to protect his wife and two young daughters. I was sent to Yardley to Debbi Senko's house. Her husband, Larry, was trapped on the 102nd floor of 1 World Trade. Then to Levittown, to interview to the shocked friends of Lorraine Bay, senior flight attendant on United Flight 93.

A man from Morrisville stepped into the newsroom, pleading for help. He said a woman trapped in one of the towers had inadvertently dialed his home phone and, thinking it was her parents, left a message telling her father how sorry she was for "all the problems I've caused the family." She didn't say her name or where she was at the WTC. The man thought we could help him "trace" the call so he could get the message to her family.

We couldn't, of course. As much as I and our exec editor tried, he would not go public with his story. "It's too personal," he said.

The horror unfolded all day. The names of the missing rolled in. By afternoon the managing editor had taped large pieces of paper to a newsroom wall. The names of the missing were written in blue. When confirmed (or assumed) dead, the name was crossed out and re-written in red. Within days almost 20 names were in red.

Our extra hit the streets that afternoon. The one-word headline over an AP photo of the burning towers said, "Unthinkable."

J.D. Mullane is a columnist for the Courier Times.

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