arrived at MSNBC’s New Jersey studio on 9/11, he was on air and then in the anchor chair, as bits of information streamed in from correspondents and wire services. As the screen showed images of a smoldering lower Manhattan, Holt told viewers that, amid all the chaos, they had gotten a report that a large, fourth plane had crashed, “just north of the Somerset County airport, 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
I was probably underneath the Hudson River in the Lincoln Tunnel, going to work at MSNBC, which at the time was based in New Jersey, and I was on a company shuttle bus and all of us on board looked up and questioning what that smoke was coming from Manhattan. And I walked in the studio, saw a monitor, this was apparently moments after the first plane hit.
Holt said that he was not able to get home that night because the bridges and tunnels leading into Manhattan were closed, so he stayed in a hotel in Secaucus. I was at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, working on some of our coverage the other day, and the young lady who was escorting me to where we were going to do the interview. We’re making small talk and I asked her, ‘Are you from New York? Where were you on 9/11?’ And she tells the story of being a four year old girl, and really remembering how distraught her mother was during all this. And I said, ‘Wow, let’s talk about generations. The story you told is my story when John F. Kennedy was shot.