As friends, and readers of my political news website, know, I spent a lot of time covering and photographing combat hots spots. I did not expect the worst to be at home.
On Sept. 11, 2001, I was at the State Department in Washington, DC , photographing a visit by a foreign official when my Blackberry pager began to vibrate. The message read: “Explosion. Pentagon. Get there!”
I saw smoke rising from the building when I climbed into my Jeep. The 14th Street and Memorial bridges were closed to all but emergency traffic, so I headed down towards the Navy Yard to take a bridge across the river. While waiting for a light to change, I saw several Marines, in utilities, standing post at the entrance to the Yard, an unusual amount of activity..
I quickly shot from the Jeep before the light changed and I headed over the river to a feeder route to the Beltway to drive in a circle route to I-395, leading back to DC and the Mall. Turning on the radio brought news of the planes hitting the World Trade Center.
Finally arriving at the Pentagon, I found a spot to pull off Columbia Pike and park the Jeep, grabbing my cameras and bag, I flashed my Pentagon Press Pass to get by a guard and found a spot on a rise that showed the Southern view of the building and a large gap with fire and smoke.
A cab driver sat on the ground next to his vehicle, which was crushed by a light pole that apparently was knocked over by something. “Plane did this,” he said in a thick accent. “Big plane. It then hit the Pentagon.”
On the top of the rise, you could feel the heat of the blaze, the smell of aviation gas and the smell of death. I shot photos of the building and focused on an Arlington County fireman taking a needed break.
Eyewitnesses said a commercial airliner flew low over the ground before hitting the building. I was under the contract with a French wire service at the time. It sent runners to bring fresh batteries and digital flash cards. My wife would later tell me that she saw some of my photos on TV while she watching the tragedy unfold.
I worked late into the night, taking no breaks, until I finally crawled into the Jeep and headed home, which was not that far from the Pentagon.
A note taped to the front door of the condo had a card attached from an Navy Criminal Investigative Service investigator named John Ryan, asking me to call “as soon as you can.” I thought it was a joke, because Jack Ryan was the hero of Tom Clancy’s books.
It wasn’t a joke. When I called the next morning, Ryan was a real CIS agent.
He asked: “Were you in the vacinity of the Washington Navy Yard yesterday?”
“Yes, I was,” I replied.
“And what was your purpose there?”
“As I recall, I was waiting for the stoplight to change so I could get on 295 to cross over the bridge.”
“You were observed taking photos. What was the purposed of the photos?”
“News value,” I said. “That’s what I do.”
“Can you confirm that?”
“Well, I hold press credentials for the Pentagon, the White House as a contract photojournalist for AFP. In fact, one of the photos I shot at the Navy Yard is on Page 6 of today’s Washington Post. There are other photos of mine from the Pentagon attack in the paper.”
I heard him shuffle some pages.
“I see the photos,” he said. “And the Pentagon confirms your press credentials.”
He asked me some more questions before saying he was sorry to raise the issue but added “we had to cover all bases after what happened.”
“I understand,” I said. “My I ask? Do you go by John or Jack?”
“John,” he said. “I get enough grief from those who want to know if I am Jack Ryan.”
A few days after 9/11, I dropped my wife off at our doctor’s offices and went to park. Walking back to the office, saw a banner on a movie theater about remembering the attack. As I raised my camera to take a shot, a motorcycle with a tattered flag rumbled by. It mad the picture more treasured.
A short time later, I would later be in Afghanistan, photographing the search for Osama bin Laden. I would be in other combat zones until returning from the last one before we decided to leave DC and moved to what we thought would be a quiet and less violent life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Floyd County in 2004.
Then a phone call from an assignment editor in Washington on the early morning hours of Monday, April 16m 2007, woke me up and asked: “How far are you from Blacksburg, VA, and Virginia Tech?”
I responded it was one county over.
“You’ve got an assignment. It’s a shooting. A bad one.”
I spent the entire week there to photograph the worst mass school shooting in history at that time.
I had put my photo gear away. Now they remain in a “go bag” — for the next time the phone rings.