Mojo Remembers 9/11

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So 25 years ago at 846 is when the world
changed for a lot of people that are listening to
this show. But even surprisingly enough for not a lot
of people that were alive at that time, 30% of
the world's population of our population wasn't even alive on

(00:22):
2001 of nine and nine 11 of 2001. I was,
when I saw that stat, I kind of like was like,
Oh my gosh, Because for me as a, you know,
a 50, mid-50s guy right now, I.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Remember it so well.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
But also, it was probably one of the first major
history events that I felt like I was there for.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
You know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Aside from maybe when, I don't know if you guys
remember the space shuttle that blew up on launch. That
was like the first one as a little kid.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Is that Houston we have a problem with that? No,
that was, this.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Was the Challenger where they had a school teacher on there.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Where were you for 9-11 though? What were you doing?
I was right here.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I'm not here, but I was in Oak Park. So
studios were 10 in Greenfield, was on the air. The
whole show was here. Actually, we as a show had
a really interesting thing because just that morning that we
were here, we were recapping the MTV Awards that Spike

(01:34):
and Chad went to.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
So they were in New York. Yeah, so they went
to New York. They were there.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
They were broadcasting for us with the MTV Awards from
the Z100 studios that were looking right across at the
World Trade Center. So they came back. They were in
the studio. We were all here. We were all hanging out.
I remember we were on the air. I remember when
we were on the air, we have TVs in the
studios just like we did in our Farmington studios. And

(02:03):
we're watching on television. And then I get in my ear, Chad,
who says to me, hey, you should go look at
what's going on on TV right now.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
And we had TiVos back then. I don't know if
you remember. Yeah, I remember TiVo. Bloop, bloop, bloop.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
And I'm looking at what's going on. I didn't understand
what's happening. So I rewound and then heard.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Of course, the major concern is human loss.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
I mean, do you know if there were many.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
People I heard this woman's voice.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
This is Katie Couric, who was on, at the time
it was Matt Lauer, Katie Couric on the Today Show.
And so we were kind of, as a show, talking
about what we thought was going on, thinking that it
was just a plane that had some malfunction. And then
all the stuff happened. You know what happened. But I
want to kind of reminisce a little bit, just with
some people, just for a moment of where you were.

(02:54):
I don't even know, Shannon, we've worked together for such
a long time, but At the time, were you in 2001?
I was in college.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
So it was my freshman year. It's so crazy to
me how vividly I remember this moment because I was
in my dorm room. I was blow-drying my hair with
a bright yellow blow-dryer, like the details you remember. And
we had either the Today Show or Good Morning America on,
my roommate and I. And I was like blow-drying my
hair watching the TV. And so I was watching this

(03:26):
happen as it happened. And I remember calling my mom
and dad as I walked to my first class, which
was in my English literature class. And the professor, Dr. Levy,
at the time, everybody came into class and it was
dead silent. And he walked in and he sat on
his desk and he said, I want you, he said,

(03:48):
class is canceled. I want you to go back to
your room and I want you to turn on the
TV and I want you to take in everything that
is happening. and call your family. And it was just,
I just remember the mood of campus that day was
just so crazy.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Kev, where were you at that time? How old were
you at that time? I was 11 years old.

Speaker 5 (04:12):
I was in the sixth grade at David Ellis Academy,
7 Mile and Schaefer. And I think I was in Ms.
Reed's class. And it was a normal day. Everything was
going as it was. And then all of a sudden,
They pulled everybody out of our individual classes that were

(04:32):
on like our floor and rushed us into our science teacher, Mr.
Foreman's class. So we go in Mr. Foreman's class, tall
white dude, glasses, had his shirt tucked in his jeans,
brown belt, love Mr.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Foreman.

Speaker 5 (04:45):
They pull in his like double-decker like movie wheel in,
you know when they pull in the cart? Yeah, they
had the cart, double-decker, the TV on top. They put
it in the front of the class. The class was
so packed. It was the most I've ever seen like
students in the class. It was packed in there. We
were sitting on tables. Some were sitting on the floor.
Some were sitting in chairs. All the teachers were in there.
You just look around the room. Everybody's, like, glued into

(05:05):
this center television.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
And then he goes. He cuts it on.

Speaker 5 (05:09):
And then he, like, manually, like, puts up the volume.
You can see, like, the ticks of the green volume
go up. And then you see what's going on. And
I remember Mr. Foreman was, like, standing at the TV.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
And then he turned around. I just remember his face.
He was, like, 10,000 per tile. He was, like, 10,000
per tile. I'll never get his face. What's that mean?
I have no idea.

Speaker 5 (05:28):
At this point, I don't know if he was, like,
trying to imagine how many people were affected or, like,
the building or whatever.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
But he was like, 10,000 per tile.

Speaker 5 (05:35):
And then, honestly, you know, as an 11-year-old, you don't
understand the severity of the moment. I was just pissed
they canceled recess.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Like, they made that announcement. It was like, recess is canceled.
Everybody was like, oh.

Speaker 5 (05:46):
And then our parents started to pick us up.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Oh, for sure.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
What's crazy, too, is I remember watching both planes hitting
the towers. And then as the morning went on, you
started hearing the other things.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Other stuff, yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
The Pentagon, the Flight 93.

Speaker 6 (06:01):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
I remember being on the air, and I was calling
and texting with Elvis. Or at that time, I think
emailing with Elvis and sending emails to him. And Elvis
is our incredible host for iHeart out of New York.
And I'm like, Elvis, is everything okay? Is everything okay?
And he sent him back. He and Scary and those
guys were sending info back. But it wasn't until that

(06:25):
second plane. And then when the plane hit at the Pentagon,
I thought at that point we had an aviation malfunction.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
I thought, okay, this could be terrorism.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
But then I also thought the The way that they
got to us was they made these planes just all
of a sudden. I didn't realize there were actual people
in those planes bringing them down. So you were my
son Joe. Yeah, I was in kindergarten.

Speaker 7 (06:50):
So I don't really have like a.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
a huge memory of it.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
You didn't watch it, I'm sure, right? The teachers didn't
put the TV in front of you?

Speaker 4 (06:57):
No.

Speaker 7 (06:57):
I just know that my mom said they were trying
to pick us up from school and they were not
letting them pick us up. But other than that, my
memories are after, like the after effects learning about it
in second grade.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Fifth grade.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Lucy's learning about it right now.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
She's reading two books about it.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
We take a trip to New York City every December
and this year I think I'm going to take her
to the memorial.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
I've never been.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
And I think she's mature enough to be able to
handle it and understand now that she's learned about it.
But I heard that it's just, it's beautiful, but very
hard to get through.

Speaker 7 (07:34):
Did you see the drones that they.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
That was incredible. I thought that was weird. Wait, it
had the outlines of the towers?

Speaker 5 (07:43):
Like if you were looking in the skyline and you
saw the towers.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
It was cool.

Speaker 7 (07:48):
It helped me imagine what they actually looked like. I
didn't even know.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
So here's the thing. For me, the wildest part of
this was it completely changed How a lot of things
were done.

Speaker 6 (08:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
I mean, before, you know, that happened, there was no
security like there is security nowadays.

Speaker 6 (08:12):
Right.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
You could go to the gate and wait for somebody.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Even more than the airport. Everywhere you went to, there
really wasn't.

Speaker 7 (08:19):
What was TSA like?

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Was it not strict? There was no TSA.

Speaker 6 (08:22):
It was like.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
No such thing. Yeah. You like just walked around the airport.

Speaker 7 (08:26):
I don't.

Speaker 4 (08:26):
It was.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (08:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
It's hard to remember what that was like. They didn't
really check bags. Like they check bags now.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Like it was, you basically walked through and you had
just had to show your ticket. It was almost kind
of like design and going to events at like Ford
field or, you know, like, or wherever the venues, you
really didn't, you didn't walk through a lot of the
layers of security that you went through. It definitely changed
the perspective of that. Also changed the way that a
lot of people started looking at other people. It made

(08:53):
a lot of people honestly, Discriminate. Discriminate. I thought I
saw an interview with then President George W. Bush, but
now a current one. And they asked him a question.
He was on, I think, a podcast of Condoleezza Rice,
who was his security advisor at the time and then
became the secretary of state. He went to a mosque

(09:16):
and he said the reason he went to a mosque
was he wanted to show that it's. that Muslims were
not evil, bad people, and that their religion doesn't call
for this.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
It was rogue people. It was bad people that did this.
I thought that was pretty powerful.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
One of the other things I remember, and this is
way after the 9-11 thing, I remember when he threw
out the first pitch at that World Series game in
Yankee Stadium, and then I've seen the ESPN behind the
scenes of how he had a bulletproof vest on, how
he practiced underneath the stadium.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
That was pretty wild.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Our show that day was interesting because there were members
of the show that.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Didn't want to stay on the air.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
There were members of the show that were like, we,
you know, nobody's really listening to us for this. I
think it was honestly one of the best shows that this,
you know, Mojo in the morning show has ever done.
And one of the reasons was we stayed for the
listener and we gave assurance.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
That everything was going to be okay.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Like we did it in, especially the weeks afterwards, we
did so much to try to just make people feel that, Hey,
you know, we're going to come together. And it was
kind of wild in this day and age of seeing
that we have such a divide. We came together.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
It was pretty, it was pretty amazing to see how,
you know, people became, you know, one in this and
You know, if you didn't know anybody that lived in
New York City that was in the World Trade Center
or was, you know, in any of these planes, you
felt like you knew them.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
But you did.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
It was like everybody knew somebody who was somehow affected.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Everybody. And that's honestly how it should be. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (10:59):
Like, we look at this planet, we look at America,
and we have these invisible lines that we've established that
separates us.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
I'm Michigan, you're New York.

Speaker 5 (11:07):
When you wash away all of that, even the color
of our skin, we bleed the same blood.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
We're the same people. We should love each other. Sherry,
what's up?

Speaker 6 (11:15):
Hey, good morning, Mojo. Do you remember the Friday before 9-11?

Speaker 2 (11:20):
I know what you're going.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
To bring up.

Speaker 4 (11:23):
Yup.

Speaker 6 (11:23):
When Tim had that dream.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
So what's she talking about? Let me explain this.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
So Tim, myself and, uh, Chad and Steve, everybody was
going to New York. And Tim and I decided not
to go to New York. You remember this, Sherry? Well,
Tim had a weird premonition that something was not good
and that we shouldn't go. And he kind of scared

(11:53):
me a little bit to not go. And so just
the two went. And We talked about it on the
air on Friday. Oh, yeah, you know, Tim, and I'm
not going to go.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
I mean, Spike was making fun of him. You know
what I mean? It was like.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
It was, Sherry, can I tell you, Tim and I
talk about that a lot still today.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Tim Richards was our boss.

Speaker 4 (12:13):
Oh, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
He was our Tony Travato. And Tim Richards, we had
an amazing trip. That was Michael Jackson was going to
perform at the MTV VMAs. We're going to see Michael
and all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
I didn't go.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Tim didn't go. I was like, I ain't getting on
an airplane. It wasn't so much. It was not that
we thought a terrorist attack was going to happen, Sherry.
We were worried that, you know, something bad would happen
to the plane.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Like it would have a mechanical function. Tim and I wasn't.
Tim and I used to. One of the reasons I
think Tim had this thing, too. Tim and I were
on a flight. from Tucson, Arizona to New Orleans one
time that almost crashed, like that had to do an
emergency landing. So Tim was like, I had that same feeling. So, well,
you've been with us a long time, Sherry.

Speaker 6 (12:57):
Yeah, yeah, a long time. Well, prayers to all the
families that are remembering everybody from 9-11 and you guys have.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
A great day.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, and prayers to those first responders that now you're
hearing the air wasn't good and they got lied to
about that. I think Jon Stewart's amazing guy for what
he's done to fight for a.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Lot of people.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Tyra, let me grab a couple more people reminiscing and
talking about this. And we're talking about the 25th anniversary
of 9-11. What's going on, Tyra?

Speaker 4 (13:33):
Good morning, guys. So just reminiscing about it. One thing
first I want to say, do you guys remember that
that particular day was a voting day here in Michigan?

Speaker 2 (13:45):
It was election day.

Speaker 4 (13:47):
It was election day, yes, and they had been saying
9-11 for like about a week straight because it was
an emergency to get out and vote. I remember that.
And so that morning I dropped my daughter off at school.
She was in second grade. It was a beautiful morning here.
I don't know if you remember that. The sun was beaming.
I had stopped and got my coffee, went and got
on the computer, you know, working and doing my resume

(14:11):
and stuff. And all of a sudden I'm listening to
the news on the TV saying, And everything just changed.
Like my heart instantly dropped. Like the first thing I
could think to do was go to school and pick
my daughter up.

Speaker 6 (14:26):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (14:26):
I just immediately needed my daughter. I needed to get
her in my sight for whatever reason, because I suffer
from PTSD. When my daughter was when I was pregnant
with my daughter, I went through a very traumatic situation
in 1993. And so like my whole body was shaking.
Like I, my, my uncle, like I went to his
house cause he was closest to me, but then I

(14:48):
just grabbed my daughter and went to my mom's. My
mom was always my safe place. Um, you know, and
I just remember wanting to go be with mommy and
have my daughter with me and, and, and just get
out from there.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
As a, as a parent, you don't know how you're,
you're going to protect your kids when you realize that it's,
Something way bigger than anything we can deal with. Thank
you for the call. Martin, what's up? How old were
you at the time?

Speaker 6 (15:16):
I was in the 10th grade. So my math is bad.
So like 14 or 15. I remember I was on
the school bus listening to you guys getting off because
I had to miss first period for whatever reason. And
I was in French class.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
And that's when that happened.

Speaker 6 (15:36):
But the thing that I remember the most, and maybe
you can help me remember the name, but I remember
the two morning broadcasters from.

Speaker 5 (15:43):
Fox 2 News.

Speaker 6 (15:44):
And Fox 2 was replaying the events of the day.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
Over and over again.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
I think it was Al Allen and Lucy Nolan, I think,
were the ones at that time, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 7 (15:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Do you remember when you were listening to us?

Speaker 1 (15:58):
We were running TV audio, and so we were watching
local audio and then TV audio from the national audio.
And then, honestly, people started taking our audio, which was wild,
because we started talking to people in New York City
at the time.

Speaker 6 (16:14):
I remember Spike was very, very adamant about being quiet, or, like,
he was going through that moment of, like, what the
last caller and you were just talking about.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yes.

Speaker 6 (16:23):
But with Lucy, I remember her, like, In the moment,
talking about the first plane hit and when the second
one hit, I remember her action like it burned in
the back of my mind and that just stuck with me.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yeah. Seeing my mom react.

Speaker 6 (16:39):
And then my uncle called because he was actually in D.C.
He was a Marine. He was detailed to the president.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
And he just.

Speaker 6 (16:49):
Called to let us know that he was fine. But, yeah,
I remember her, that image of her in my head.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
There was so much at that time that to me,
like now has come back. And one of the big
ones was the TV was way too visual because you
saw people, you know, jumping and stuff. Then I'm going
to kind of fast forward a little bit because we stayed,
I remember we stayed on the air as a show
until probably seven, six or maybe five o'clock that night.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
I don't know what it was. It was a long time.
Like we stayed that, we stayed very late.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
And honestly, I feel bad as a, as a husband
to Chelsea because she was, She and I would talk
during moments that I had a break while I was
running the TV. And she was scared because she had
no family here. We had just moved to Detroit. She
had the kids there. We only had two at the time.
It was Joe and Jacob. And Jacob was really little.
But then I remember the days after, even that day,

(17:44):
it was so quiet outside.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Because there were no flights. No planes. It was crazy.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
My brother was in Vegas for a work trip. convention
and had to be staying in Vegas for like five
days or something like that because they stopped all air travel.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
You know what? I still have a very hard time
listening to, and I was in bed last night and
I was just scrolling on Instagram and all of the
voicemails of people calling their loved ones from the planes,
from the World Trade Centers. And I heard some last
night that I had never heard before. Like there's the
famous one where a husband called his wife from the
flight and I have heard that one, you know, many,

(18:24):
many times, but those still just give me goosebumps and
bring tears to my eyes to hear those last words
that people left, um, that you go back and listen to.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
How, how about, uh, the, how about the, the people
that you also heard and probably saw in some of
the news stuff. And I'm sure that I know ABC
is doing a big event tonight. They got, they got
this big thing where they're going to be there and
they've got, um, you know, music, but they also have families.

(18:54):
And then they also are going to talk to, in
a lot of the cases, people that were the first
responders and first there. But how about when you saw
the people that didn't go to work that day, that
didn't go on the airplane?

Speaker 3 (19:09):
That is my step uncle. He was supposed to go
to work that day and he was ill. So he did,
he lives in Chicago. He would commute several times a week.
He was working for Bank of America at the time
and was so ill, he didn't get on his flight
to go, but he would have been there. And then
also this morning, I read an article in People Magazine
of a woman who says that Mariah Carey saved her

(19:31):
life that day because she worked in the North Tower.
She was supposed to be at work at a certain time,
I don't know, 8.30, 9 o'clock. And she was like, oh,
I want to go buy this Mariah Carey CD. So
she went, bought the CD, was a little bit later
than she normally was entering the North Tower. that's when
the first plane hit. And she immediately went back home.

(19:52):
But she would have been at work already had she
not just done something random and went and bought this CD.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Man, it's something that changed the world. But again, I
go back to 30% of people weren't even alive at
that time.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
So it just shows you how fast time goes by, too.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Because it seemed like yesterday to me, but for many,
many didn't even know, weren't even born when it happened.
And we're going to take a break. We'll be back
with regular programming and talking about stuff. But obviously, we
will have our moment of silence next. when that first
plane hit at 8.46 this morning.