President Trump, Vice President Vance, and four former presidents and officials gathered at ceremonies in Washington, New York, and Shanksville this morning commemorating the 25th anniversary of September 11, with the names of the people killed read aloud, a bell tolling between each.
Amid the tributes, President Trump offered a line that captured the day’s tone: “We were all New Yorkers that day. Every one of us. We were all New Yorkers. But we were also all Americans. We were all family. We were all patriots.”
A quarter-century on, the wireless and broadcast infrastructure industry carries its own losses from that morning — losses that rarely make it into the national ceremony, but that this industry has never stopped observing on its own.
General Telecom’s 13
General Telecom, a subsidiary of American Tower Corporation, kept its headquarters on the 83rd floor of One World Trade Center. Thirty-seven people worked out of that office. Thirteen of them did not survive the morning of September 11, 2001, after a hijacked plane struck the tower and brought the 110-story building down. By a series of coincidences, many GT employees were not yet in the building when the plane hit — some literally on their way in. The company’s president, Brian Metherell, was in Los Angeles on business that day. American Tower established the General Telecom Family Fund afterward to support the victims’ families.
A room full of contractors, watching it happen
That same morning, roughly 70 of the nation’s largest wireless general contractors were an hour into an all-day estimating presentation hosted by American Tower’s construction services group, outside Washington, D.C. The group’s regional manager of safety and health, Francis Hartnett, had just finished a session on tower owner safety requirements when he burst through the conference room doors alerting attendees of the first plane crash, stating it looked like America was under attack.
“When it was first announced, I thought he was joking,” Florida contractor Douglas Coberly, president of B&C Contracting, recalled. “This can’t possibly be happening. It’s beyond belief.”
Attendees moved silently to the hotel lobby, surrounding a modest 28″ television to watch the footage unfold. One South Carolina contractor closed his eyes and began to pray; others nearby joined him, not realizing that overhead American Airlines Flight 77 was minutes away from hitting the Pentagon.
Less than two hours earlier, some of those same contractors had regarded each other with the slight disdain of fierce competitors. By that afternoon, competitors had become bound together like family — lending strangers cash and driving people they barely knew out of their way toward home, uncertain what else might still be coming.
With commercial flights grounded nationwide, many drove instead — some passing Newark Airport on I-95, where hundreds of aircraft sat silent on the tarmac, and catching, through tear-streaked eyes across the Hudson River, their first sight of the smoke still rising from Ground Zero, as emergency workers still searched for survivors.
The six who stayed at the transmitters
The Broadcasters Foundation of America this week paid tribute to a group whose story sits alongside GT’s: six broadcast engineers on duty in the North Tower on September 11, some arriving for the morning shift, others still there from the night before. “They were our colleagues, our community, and our brothers in broadcasting,” the BFOA said. “Their sacrifice will never be forgotten.”
When American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m., the six engineers were at their posts. Some made final calls to their control rooms as the chaos unfolded; some were never heard from again. All six died when the tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m. In the hours between, television and radio became, in the BFOA’s words, the lifeline of a nation in shock — stations broadcasting continuously and without commercial interruption for days, anchors staying on air far past any normal shift. None of that reached the public, the BFOA noted. “They were the unseen foundation beneath every broadcast.”
Those who perished, but whose memories remain eternal, are:
Donald (Don) DiFranco, WABC-TV — 13-plus years on WABC’s engineering team. Called the control room to report a possible disruption after the tower was struck, a final act of duty before transmissions ceased at 10:28 a.m.
Gerrard “Rod” Coppola, WNET Channel 13 — Antenna engineer for New York’s flagship public television station.
Isaiah Rivera, WCBS-TV Channel 2 — 30 years on WCBS-TV’s engineering team, keeping one of the nation’s premier television markets on the air.
William Steckman, WNBC — 35 years at WNBC, tending the network’s 1 World Trade Center transmitter, mostly on the night shift.
Steve Jacobson, WPIX — 22 years as a transmission engineer, working on the North Tower’s 110th floor.
Robert “Bob” Pattison, WCBS-TV — Maintenance Transmitter Supervisor, responsible for the station’s technical foundation.
