A breezy and seasonally satisfying Tuesday, September 11, 2001, began with the promise that beat reporters craveāthe knowledge that my story would appear on the front page.
Riding high from the previous night attending Michael Jacksonās 30th-anniversary concerts at Madison Square Garden, my editor implored that I go straight to a school in Mount Vernon, NY.
She knew how to spoil a great evening watching the greatest pop music entertainer ever reunite with his brothers for a spectacular night at the Worldās Most Famous Arena.
In Mount Vernon, my editor told me that Iād find the compelling story of Patrick Dolan Critton, a 54-year-old teacher who for 30 years hid as a fugitive in plain sight. Critton belonged to a Black liberation group that, in 1971, allegedly robbed a bank and engaged in a shootout with cops. The group then hijacked an airplane to escape arrest.
But there he was, teaching high school in New York as if he had never been on the FBIās Most Wanted List and oblivious to the desperate desires the NYPD maintained for his capture.
Yes, this had A-1, above the fold, written all over it with my byline.
Early that morning, I gathered the pertinent details and headed back to my bureau located in nearby New Rochelle. Indeed, I possessed all the goods, and if we were a tabloid, Iād have āThe Wood.ā
Entering the office shortly after 9 am. I discovered that my colleagues were standing around the bureauās wall-mounted television. The first terrorist-controlled airplane had just struck the Twin Towers.
āWow, what an accident,ā a colleague remarked.
Moments later, after the second airplane struck the towers, one colleague shirked, āThatās no accident!ā
It certainly was not. I had been to the World Trade Center, been in those towers many times, and right before our eyes, they were reduced to rubble.
Shocking and completely unnerving, my colleagues and I realized that thousands of lives probably were vanquished. They were. Almost 3,000 eventually died.
The terrorists werenāt finished. Far from it.
Another airplane would rock the western side of the Pentagon in D.C., and still, one more crashed in southwestern Pennsylvania. We began to wonder how many more airplanes the terrorists had hijacked.
Suddenly, my hijacking story fell off the radarāticketed for the middle of the newspaper.
Someone had declared war on America, and for the first time since Pearl Harbor, an enemy attacked the United States on U.S. soil. Phones in the office rang wildly.
Reporters who had loved ones in lower Manhattan ignored the incoming calls, choosing, of course, to check in on their loved ones.
Jermaine Jackson, the king of popās brother, called me. āHow do we get out of New York? Can you help us get out of the city,ā Jackson asked? The Jackson family had arrived in New York as part of Michaelās shows to celebrate his anniversary in show business.
At that time, we were longtime acquaintances and collaborators. āThis is scary. People are panicking,ā exclaimed Jackson, who, along with several family members, stayed at the W Hotel in downtown Manhattan not far from the terrorist attacks.
Ultimately, the Jacksons rented two RVs and escaped from New York by taking the 3,000-mile drive back to Los Angeles. Still, for me, the irony couldnāt be overstated. I sat there, a notebook containing facts about a man named Critton who hijacked an airplane 30 years prior.
American Justice had finally caught up with him. His story was as big as any, but now a footnote.
A terror mastermind named Osama bin Laden, who lived a cloak and dagger life more than 6,700 miles away in Afghanistan and escaping U.S. forces by living from cave to cave and underground bunker to underground bunker, stole Crittonās frontpage.
Bin Laden stole my front page. But, more importantly, his wicked and cowardly act cost thousands of precious lives and caused countless heartbreak.
Twenty years later, Iām confident that many would have preferred if my story remained the biggest headline of September 11, 2001.
Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire senior national correspondent