Dawn Ennis and Amy Weinstein

00:05 The I'm Amy Weinstein. I am 52 years old. Today's date is March 12th, 2010 and we are in lower Manhattan in Foley square at the store Corpus.

00:18 My name is Don Ennis. I'm 45 years old today is March 12th, 2010 and we are in lower Manhattan New York and we only met a few minutes ago. So I'm wondering can you tell me a little bit about yourself either when and where you were born? You mentioned being in a firefighting and police family when we were saying hello outside. I am a native New Yorker born in Queens. I was born to a New York City Transit Police Officer and a stage mother who basically had me in commercials from Age 5 until 17 my

00:58 Sister married a police officer my cousin became a firefighter but my dad told me he'd break both my legs before he let me become a police officer. What do you think was behind that he didn't think that the police officers job was the same when I was out with chable as it was when he entered the force people just didn't respect cops as well in the 1970s and early 80s and he had pushed me to find another path and that was journalism scholarship to a university right here in the New York school School of Visual Arts, which at the time had a journalism program.

01:42 Oh, I didn't know that that's where I met my wife who is also a scholarship student.

01:47 And how did you School of Visual did you start in journalism, or was it something when you were at school that we had a journalism program which was very small and we were sort of the freaks of the school. Everybody had green hair and ripped jeans and they were artists and we were journalists. The thing about svi was although we didn't have professional teachers. We had teachers who are professional journalists. These are people who were exposed to journalism and expose. To journalism. And while the education may have been different from what Columbia or NYU offer. I was given a job as a journalist while in college and I felt like I was working as a journalist to even before I graduated.

02:32 And what kind of Journalism was it Local News International a little bit of everything but my concentration was broadcast journalism that became news director of The College radio station, which we created and I also worked in television and I did a little print as well. And did you ever regret not becoming a police officer or firefighter many days, I would say that it was something that having grown up in the house of having been exposed to the life of having sort of the want to be experienced. I constantly was interacting with police officers my profession. I wish that I had become one, but at the same time but I loved about journalism was I wasn't just one person. I got to spend a day in the life of many different people and that's what appealed to me eventually.

03:26 Oh, that's it. That's interesting. I like that's cuz I would think that being a police officer. You're also not just one person. I mean that you've got one job that you're exposed to so much especially in a city like like New York. I can imagine your father telling you stories.

03:44 So maybe we should skip ahead to the day of September 11th, and I'm wondering what was your ordinary day? What would your day have been like or how did it begin? Well, I had had produced a off my job was to work the overnights at channel to hear a New York. I come in around I guess it was 11 or midnight and I would produce the Morning News. My job was to organize a stories write the stories decide which stories go in which order and then to basically make sure they got on TV and my job that day was to tell the story of a primary that was being held that was our big story and it was a primary in the mayor's race and there's a lot of other news that just didn't seem as important as a few hours. There was this woman on Long Island who had to the publicist and she backed into some people and she was in a big controversy.

04:44 And there was also a beautiful weather forecast in store. It's going to be a gorgeous day and it was also Fashion Week was that on your agenda. It was fashion week and I think we did something but I can't remember to be honest.

05:00 Ensued so you had come in you were off the day before but you came in the night of September 10th, September 10th. I came in at night and then it became September 11th. Then we did the newscast on the 11th. Okay, so it's the 5 a.m. And 6 a.m. News prior to the what was called then CBS This Morning on Channel 2.

05:21 And Wilder and so when was your day have ended?

05:26 I was yeah, yeah my job after the shows were over was to at that day on that day. My job was to train someone to produce the movie called The Cut in this is the part of the Network show where they say now, he's your local news and the local news anchors to two or three minutes of local news weather and traffic and my job that day was a train one of our writers had to be a producer. So that's a my job was to make sure that he knew what he was doing. This is very first date ever trying to do it and we were in The Newsroom and we were basically going over what needed to be done.

06:03 And when did everything change an assignment editor channel to anybody who's ever worked at Channel 2 in the last 20 years knows one.

06:13 Wanda has a very distinctive New York voice. I believe she's from Queens.

06:20 And she was on the telephone.

06:23 Wanda took the phone call and in a very louder than normal voice said a plane hit the World Trade Center.

06:31 And everybody stopped

06:34 The young man who I was training on how to do a cut and turning me and said you better do this one.

06:40 So what I did was I sat down at the computer. He was sitting at created a new script in the computer.

06:47 Yellow over to Wanda and said is that confirmed that she said? Yes, and I typed the words this just in a plane has struck the World Trade Center. I printed it and I ran to the control room in a studio in this all derangement of channel to the studio with actually on the way to the control room and we weren't on the area we were still in that work, but the anchors were getting ready cuz we're a few minutes away and I basically told the director we're going on now.

07:18 We don't have pictures we didn't have information. We had one phone call that told us what it happened. And that's when everything started to happen. We started moving the helicopter Chopper to a friend of mine. Dan. Rice was in there.

07:35 We had a camera top the Empire State Building that we turned that provided us the first look at what happened. We got a phone call that said it was a twin-engine plane now just a few days before some dope in a plane had tried to either hit or miss the Statue of Liberty and it was an incident with the small little plane just missed the Statue of Liberty when taking a twin engine plane, that doesn't look like a hole made by a twin-engine plane. We've course didn't account for the fact that there are larger jets that only have two engines but at the time we were trying to figure out what is this that caused this traumatic disastrous hole.

08:18 Then more phone calls started pouring in other people started coming in from dayside who took over the control room duties.

08:28 I went back out to The Newsroom ISO support person to try and help figure out what was going on. And how do we tell the story?

08:37 One of the jobs was

08:39 To make sure that we had video because believe it or not those first 10 or 15 minutes. Nobody was recording anything. We were just so intensely crazy about getting on the air that nobody thought of posterity.

08:54 Am I even been an hour?

08:57 I pick up the phone at one point when I had a moment to breathe and I wanted to call my wife. I wanted to call my dad. But instead I called a good friend of mine who was a co-worker of mine someone I looked up to a mentor of mine.

09:11 I know he wouldn't be awake yet.

09:13 And I called Rick Regan to listen to ever west side and he answered the phone groggily and I said turn on the TV. He says why it says watch it and get in here and hung up.

09:25 Rick later thank me for that because in the brevity of what I said, he understood immediately that it was a crisis and he was needed it was all hands on deck time. It was much yelling a lot of screaming we had reports that there were five six planes circling Manhattan as the second plane hit.

09:45 People were visibly shaken there were tears that were injected with conjecture of

09:55 What's going to happen next?

09:58 The hardest part about that whole experience was it took me a little while to figure out

10:06 Play next day.

10:08 That the plane that first struck the World Trade Center had flown over my child's daycare over my house over my wife's place of work consumer reports in Yonkers and then over our building on its way down to lower Manhattan and when I found that out the day later or whenever it was

10:28 It just done me that.

10:30 How close we'd all come to being part of it instead of watching it.

10:35 I was a dumb channel to even though I haven't been there all night. I was there all day.

10:42 I didn't actually go outside but I did watch pictures on the television of the buildings being struck the

10:51 Collapse

10:53 And I was given the job when photographers came back with video tape of editing out the people jumping from the windows because we had shown one or two and obviously it was an error but someone needed to make sure that video with screen that was my job to look at the video of people jumping out windows and not show it again interrupt one of the most difficult topics for us to address as we're thinking about making the museum and creating the exhibition because people

11:28 I'm hoping you can help us people on the streets witnessed or saw people jumping the either recognize did or or they didn't people in surrounding buildings saw something different. They saw the people on the on the the ledge people on the sidewalks saw people after they'd been killed after they'd Fallen.

11:55 What can you talk about what what you saw that you just talk a little bit more about the the topic or what you think how you came to the decisions? You came to wear or anything that comes to your mind. Most of my accounting was from what I saw with my own eyes on the video tape and what people who are down there who came back saw first off the people who did come back. They had that look of having been through hell. Some of them are actually covered in the white dust and when we saw them

12:26 We ourselves were.

12:29 I think

12:31 Frightened because as one of the photographers, but it I have dead people all over me.

12:39 And it was

12:41 Unknown at that time that there also might have been a dangerous fiber or toxic something in the Arab. So for us it was just the remorse of this is the remembrance of people and we didn't know of course at that time. How many people have died? We thought there might be tens of thousands?

12:58 The jumping part

13:01 It's hard to explain in terms of does anyone really know if these people jumped if they were unable to hold on any longer if a wind gust or a force of some kind of nature push them out. All I know is that they fell

13:20 The one person who I knew who lost his life on 9/11 victim number one father Mychal judge was one of those people who were killed by someone falling from the Twin Towers.

13:33 I didn't learn of his death until the following day when I opened the newspapers and his picture was on the front page. I had known he was even there but at the chaplain of the fire department made sense.

13:45 But it wasn't just the people who fell for victims of the people who were down below to I will tell you that our decision was.

13:56 Even though it shows the deaths of possibly Untold thousands. We were going to continue to show the collapse, but we would stop at 2 junctures.

14:08 When we finally got video tape of the plane striking the building which was

14:13 Actually, very rapidly was one of few hours. We showed it a few times but then we limited how many times we would show it because it is the deaths of at least those people on the plane and then he went on the floor the floors at the whisper his were struck.

14:28 And we decided not show again. Any people who are seen falling we did show people who were waiting for help. We did show people who were bloodied and in many ways it's oriented and perhaps the most dramatic video of that entire day with the first video. They came back after the first Tower collapsed and was shot by a documentary-maker who is standing right at the foot of the World Trade Center and it looked like one of those movies where a nuclear bomb has gone off and snow is falling and that for us was another moment where you just pause and you thought what is happening.

15:12 And you know, what is happening. You mentioned some of the rumors how

15:19 Can you tell me more about the rumors you were hearing and how you started as a journalist piecing together the rumor from separating fact from from rumor. We did a few things. One of the rumors was at the Empire State Building was next that there were planes circling and ready to strike. There were rumors that the Pentagon if it has which turned out to be true.

15:46 There was a rumor that another plane was heading towards Washington and I turned out to be true, but we didn't know we couldn't figure out why Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

15:54 It was too soon for us to figure out exactly why but you can guess and our biggest question of course was.

16:01 What are they going to do to stop this? We made all these calls to air traffic people and Airlines and so many people give us so many conflicting answers as to whether flights have been grounded flights have been redirected whether the Air Force was scrambling or not who knew what it seemed that there was just as much chaos beyond our Newsroom as there was inside and one of the things we did. I think worked was we set up people to sort of be the filter before news were the anchors that was another one of my jobs was to produce basically information for an acre Cindy Shu so that it went through me before the viewers heard her say it and that was a way of making sure that if we got a rumor

16:53 We're not going to report it. Our job was to report the facts information that was necessary to for people to understand what was going on or to find out more about the loved ones.

17:06 There were so many people who were calling us begging us to tell us where's my loved one? Can you help us find them? We can't communicate with them and a lot of people don't remember this. But because the World Trade Center Natalie carried the TV antennas for almost all the stations accept channel to his back up antenna on the Empire State Building and for the Spanish station channel 2 was the only station I was still broadcasting after the collapse.

17:33 Everyone was on cable eventually, but even the cable went out for a little while until they could do the switch over in addition to that Verizon Wireless was right next door and their cell phone service was knocked out by the collapse of the first Tower and that meant all the people who are trying to reach loved ones on cell phones couldn't do it.

17:53 So we got a lot of calls and that affect one of them was from my wife related message from my mother-in-law that

18:03 One of my wife's cousins

18:06 Just found out she was pregnant and her husband worked in the World Trade Center.

18:11 And they couldn't reach him.

18:13 And they take me can you help us find them?

18:17 I'm like, I would love to.

18:20 But I can't I have no way of finding one person.

18:26 As it turned out.

18:28 Dan Abramson was going down in the elevator. That's there's excuse me, but and everything was going down the stairs with his workers co-workers. He was leading them down to the lobby.

18:42 After the first Tower was struck.

18:45 Animated announcement that said everyone should return to their office. Everything is fine.

18:50 And that people said what was go back. He said when we go down to the street were already making our way. Let's get out of the street and see what happens what the heck and they follow them and they walk down the street and just a few floors above where they worked the second plane hit.

19:08 It was a few hours later. He walked to a place where I can make a phone call and he contacted his wife and I know they didn't want everyone to know that she was pregnant this way, but it sort of added that extra.

19:21 Impetus of we have to find an answer.

19:25 And I talked to Dan and I talked to Dan the next day and he shared his story with our viewers about what it was like to be in that position because he came as close as you could possibly come to losing his life that experience.

19:45 Jordan URI empathy for the family members who were searching over the next few days not that we all didn't have that but that was another level closer. Was that part of your work? Did you do cover that part of the story or were you focused at Ground Zero or both? I can't imagine.

20:09 What your job would have been like I was fortunate to not have to leave The Newsroom and I

20:15 Felt incredible sympathy for those people who work the streets as reporters because all of them were

20:26 Approached is the best word. I want to say accosted but people were desperate for information. I just like my family you're reaching out to us to say can you help us find this person one of the stories that I think

20:39 I tried to impress upon people who didn't live in New York.

20:43 Was the image of posters of people's faces everywhere for months Beyond September 11th.

20:53 Holding out against hope that maybe somewhere those an amnesiac friend or relative. And that was one of the stories we told I was behind the scenes. My job was a try and Marshall the troops to get information out in the yard that was accurate and I was there for

21:11 12 hours a day for 4 days on and off. I don't really know if it was even 12in might have been 16. It just seemed to go on.

21:21 You know, I'm sorry to be jumping around. Didn't want to lose my train of thought you talked about the the transmission tower and the broadcast we know they were employees of the different stations. Were you in communication with any of them that morning? I was with the people who were talking to them. We were calling them from The Newsroom and although I didn't have a conversation with them except maybe to put them on hold.

21:49 There was

21:52 There was desperation and fear on the phone.

21:57 And it wasn't so much that there would be a collapse almost all of us. I would say to a person every one of us in The Newsroom kept thinking it's going to be a heck of a job to have to repair this thing. How are they going to repair this thing? All we kept thinking about was how long is going to take to evacuate all those people evacuate the building and get the World Trade Center patched up so that it'll look new again.

22:22 The collapse took us completely by surprise.

22:27 And because the transmission tower wasn't the first to collapse those people who were trapped up there were.

22:39 It would love to die.

22:45 Yeah.

22:46 It was no there was no rescue for them. I have images in my mind from the February 26th 1993 attack in which an NYPD helicopter.

22:59 Circled around the roof to try and help people and possibly I may be wrong, but I thought they might have rescued some people from the roof and we wonder why they weren't attempting that this time.

23:10 We thought that that would be a way out for our guys.

23:14 And I think those are the people who

23:18 Are often forgotten in this I mean, I'm not trying to give them a higher status in the heroes of the firefighters of the the people who really made a difference but here were people who went there because that was their job and they died because that was their job.

23:37 That's exactly the case with the police and the other firefighters and EMS. Were you in some part of your mind thinking of your your dad when all this was happening? I did that at some point take a moment to call my wife in the call my dad.

23:58 It turned out one of my dad's my dad's a retired nurse a Transit policeman and one of his colleagues had retired and started up a business and was reported with was red reported for work that day. We got a later he had died.

24:16 I thought about the path that I had Chosen and where I might have been had. I not been told not to.

24:24 I know my cousin who had joined the force of the FDNY as a paramedic and is now a firefighter was.

24:33 Champing at the bit to get down there, but wasn't I know my brother-in-law is a police officer who transferred out of New York to go to, Connecticut?

24:42 He's so desperately. Wanted to go down.

24:45 There are people all over who wanted that lend a hand.

24:49 And I don't know why.

24:52 I didn't have the urge to

24:56 Leave The Newsroom even look outside until it was my time to leave and when I did leave I could smell I could see the cloud I could experience for myself for the very first time what happened without having to see it through a TV monitor.

25:14 And

25:16 I guess inside I knew that I wouldn't want to go back into the news room right away after having experienced that and it was probably.

25:26 A week

25:28 Maybe three days. I did go down with some friends.

25:32 It was far as the public was allowed to go.

25:35 And I was Disturbed to see people taking pictures of themselves standing in front of the barricades and

25:40 I thought great another tourist attraction. You saw that that early I was wondering.

25:47 When that started within a week within a week, it was definitely going to wake and it was repulsive and understandable at the same time.

25:57 Aesthetic

25:59 The people wanted to Bear witness or wanted to to recognize that it was a historic event in their their lifetime, but it creepy also, I think one of the other things that also creep me out in this is sort of an inside news thing.

26:16 But one of the

26:19 Colleagues of mine a channel 2 came over to an area we call producers row where we all sat together and put on the news and he wanted to know what we should call it.

26:31 And I have a name.

26:33 Networks calling in America under attack and how about we you know York under attack. What are you guys thinking?

26:42 The last thing from my mind at least thing I could think about was what the label this.

26:47 I just thought

26:50 Let's just keep working on getting the story and not worry about fancy Graphics, but

26:56 Everybody has a job that you said I use that phrase America under attack. It reminds me, I'd forgotten that a lot of the children's drawings that were sent to the firefighters to the cops are to school children in New York or head. They had to heading America under attack on them. And I don't know if it gave them if it's evidence that they watch too much TV or give them something to a way of understanding or coming. I don't know I was thankful that my little boy was 2 years old for the time and not watching television news and

27:37 I was as a morning producer. I'm already sensitive to the fact that we sometimes don't show things you see at 11 at night because there might be children watching or because you're eating your breakfast and we want you to keep watching. We don't want to give you an excuse to turn away.

27:54 That was a very tough job made tougher for the fact. How do you not show the cataclysm that happened?

28:05 And risk exposing a young mind is something that

28:11 And I could cause nightmares.

28:13 And I know you said you would start it in in radio there. I know we were friends who had children that age who thought the turn the TV off but they didn't think they needed to turn the radio off. They needed the information for themselves and didn't realize that even that had a powerful effect on a two-year-old degree on it. But I think it was all we talked about for days. There was no other news Lizzie grubman was so happy. I'm sure no offense to her, but there was no other news and we actually didn't stop doing our local news or something on the order of

28:54 15 or 24 hours, we we we finally a thing let Network take over for little while so we can take a break.

29:00 It wasn't that we didn't want a continuous is that human nature is we have to breathe and use the bathroom and not everybody could do that at once.

29:14 She keep asking this wide open spaces.

29:19 When the attacks occurred your son was in daycare, my son's name is Sean Michael Ennis, and he was born.

29:31 On January 12th, 1999 and Sean was in a daycare facility because my wife used to work at CBS News while I work the channel to and to avoid daycare costs she'd work days and I work nights. So she would drive down 40 miles with little boy in the back seat, and then I get in the car and I was driving back.

29:56 That was a routine until finally she realized I don't like this. So you got a new job in Westchester that consumer reports and we put our child in daycare. And that's where she had to put them before heading off to work that morning.

30:13 So what happened with the process of making sure that you know Shawn is okay. And if your wife is okay, we haven't talked about what happens if we're both at work and there's a major national disaster. We never discussed what we would do if we just discuss why I was going to be a real problem because you worked in a building a good 30 miles away and because

30:39 I couldn't leave Manhattan if I had left Manhattan, I wouldn't be able to get back in and it was pretty clear to all of us that this was a one-way ticket if you're going to work the story you cannot go home.

30:54 My wife works as much as she could that day and I feel after a certain point watching the television became too unbearable and she went home to get a little guy and John is now 11 and he has questions once in awhile about this has he asked you why did it happen who did it? And what do you answer? I tell them because I hate America and we don't really know for sure.

31:21 Who did it except that we are told Osama Bin Laden. We are told these men who were suicide pilots and the question always remains were the people who were involved ever be brought to Justice and I let him know life is unfair and is another example of you never know what's going to happen and you have to always be

31:45 Prepared to understand that sometimes life just isn't fair. You know what you said they may or may not be brought to Justice. We've just the past few weeks though or months. The conversation has been will the trials be held here or not. What do you have? I know you have an opinion.

32:07 I don't share my opinions about that only because that's not my job to express my opinion, but I will tell you that.

32:17 I do believe in Justice. If either on this Earth or somewhere else and if our leaders say that the best way to do it his Civil Trial then I'm inclined to support them if they say the best way to do. It is Military Tribunal. I'm inclined to support them. I don't have an opinion. I report the news, but I will tell you that I've been following it. I just don't have a personal opinion the mat.

32:45 The other since we're we're down here right across the street from the courts. There was a decision announced yesterday, maybe a negotiation a settlement was announced yesterday about the rescue and Recovery workers. Who'd become ill can you have you is at a a story that you've been following or of personal interest. My first clue that there was something amiss was David Diaz a reporter at the time for Channel 2.

33:17 Refuse to take off his mask now after the attacks, they started giving out masks to The Newsroom personnel as well as the reporters and photographers.

33:30 And David was assured by the EPA commissioner Christine Whitman, who's the governor of New Jersey that all is well and David took a stand live on the air and said I've been told I don't have to wear this but I don't know what's in the air and I don't think they know what's in the air so folks. I'm sorry if I'm scaring you by wearing this mask, but I have my life. I have to protect the David still alive. And as far as I know he's ever no ill-effects and I can't really believe it a little mask is going to save his life.

33:57 But I saw so many pictures of so many people who never ever wore a mask. And I'm sure it was easier not to

34:06 But my heart goes out to them because of what we know now and it's a crime if you ask me that.

34:14 It took this long to figure out.

34:17 That these people needed more than masks.

34:22 And I think the story that

34:27 Shouldn't have been told they didn't.

34:31 Story that makes my heart break is that it wasn't just the people killed in 911.

34:37 The tragedy of September 11th are the people are still dying.

34:42 Who speaks for them?

34:47 Well, I'm glad they came to a settlement yesterday. I think that's an important step in that direction and inner part of what we hope to do is talk to as many survivors and First Responders and in people who

35:06 People in all situations in in all our relations to to this attack. I have about a million more questions, but I know we can't do that. I did want to

35:22 To ask how you would feel in a sense. Your son is now 10:11 and will be going to another year older when the memorial and you're older after that when the museum opens, which would you think he'd be the right age to come to the museum? And what would you want him to to learn by coming to the September 11th Museum?

35:46 I very much have wanted to take my family. I have three children and my wife is a school teacher. I think I should be a mandatory visit.

35:56 I personally haven't done it because I know there's so much more work yet to be done. And I guess I'm not ready to see something. That's not yet complete after all this time.

36:06 But I very much want to be a guide for my my my my children and my oldest son who lived through this even at a young age. He was born in the last century and he

36:19 Sort of spans both by his virtue of his birth. I want him to understand that although life is unfair.

36:27 They're still good and that those who have gone before us.

36:33 Must be remembered and the lessons of the past must be Listen to I very much want to take my children there and the youngest too because I don't think you can.

36:46 Start teaching history too soon. History is the thing that we often fail to heed.

36:56 Is there anything else that I didn't ask you that you want to make sure to say for your for your children or I'm fortunate that I was able to be a x over an observer on this momentous day. I'm I cherish the script that I saved from that date because for me that's the memory of telling

37:20 Untold yours what it happened but more than that

37:26 I remember a date a few weeks later in November.

37:31 A plane crashed in the rockaways November flight 589

37:35 And a young woman who spent most of the day on September 11th next to me working side-by-side with sitting next to me again that day her name is Ariel Waldman.

37:47 And we thought it was happening all over again and a scared as I was under Timber 11th that day in November scared the hell out of me and I held her hand.

37:59 And the two of us trying to support each other because we both just felt we can't get through this again. We couldn't possibly do this all over again. Fortunately. We were wrong. It wasn't terrorism.

38:12 But I knew then that

38:14 I had changed that was the life before 9/11 and the life after and the last thing I want to say is when I did move away in January people in my new home town of Jacksonville. Florida said to me. Oh, yeah, September 11th. I have friends in New York, when it's people ever going to get over it.

38:34 And I try not to be rude as the new guy especially the New York or the Yankee.

38:39 I just answered them very simply with one answer one word. Never.

38:47 I think that's right. Well, thank you for thanks for doing this with this was very very very glad to hear my story.