That morning, I was still asleep as my wife got ready for work, until she shook me awake, turned on the TV and said, "you need to see this."
On the screen beyond the foot of the bed, the World Trade Center towers burned.
"I'm not sure we should be bringing a kid into this world," said my wife, four months pregnant at the time.
A couple of hours later, I was on my way over to what is now the Dignity Health Training Center, where my job as East Valley Tribune beat writer took me every day to cover the Cardinals. Twenty-five years ago today, I needed to do my job as it was. I also needed to be around others while it seemed the world was crumbling.
I found my way into the media relations area, where a TV played. The horrific images played out on the screen, the towers having by then crumbled. I sat in the oversized orange chairs still there from when the team moved into the building more than a decade previous, watching the TV.
Pat Tillman came in the room and sat next to me.
It was a Tuesday, the NFL having just opened their regular season two days prior. With 31 teams at the time, the NFL needed someone to have a Week 1 bye. It had been the Cardinals. They were supposed to fly to Washington D.C. in just a few days for their opener, but now the Pentagon was in flames just a train stop from the hotel where the team was planning on staying.
A day or two later, players from the Giants and Jets, watching the parking lot of their stadium used both for emergency staging from the tragedy and as a reminder of the fallen – commuters who had parked there that day died in the attack, never to return to their cars – [told the NFL they wouldn’t be playing games that weekend](https://www.nfl.com/news/remembering-9-11-this-wasn-t-the-time-to-play-football).
The NFL rightfully canceled those games, perhaps a moot point given that [air travel had been stopped](https://x.com/JoshuaBarzon/status/2097039699869388850?s=20) out of fear of further hijackings.