All the Things We Never Knew by Sheila Hamilton Page A

edited scripts in their hands. We called it the bunker, the place where we spent long hours with nothing more than vending machines to sustain us. There were no windows, so I couldn’t tell what the sunset was like.
    I let the phone go to voicemail—one more distraction wasn’t what I needed. It rang again a few minutes later, and I picked up. “Hello, this is Sheila.”
    A warm, deep voice spoke up. “Hey, Sheila, I know you’re probably on deadline, so I’ll keep it short. This is Bill Gehring.” He wasone of the most respected radio talk show hosts in Portland. I’d heard through the grapevine that Bill was putting together a team of top talent for a new radio station in town, and I’d let other professionals know I was restless. “Let’s grab some lunch sometime this week. What do you say?”
    Was anyone listening? I lowered my voice and tried to mask the thrill that was moving through my body.
    â€œHi, Bill, thanks,” I managed to reply. “Here’s my cell phone so we can talk later.”
    Later that night, I sat at my desk. The picture I had of Sophie on my desk needed to be wiped down with Windex. She was three and a half now, outgrowing her toddler’s tummy in a pink ballerina outfit and tutu.
    Three weeks later, the photo of Sophie in her tutu sat on my new desk overlooking Fifth Avenue in downtown Portland. I now sat behind my own microphone at my own radio show.
    When the station general manager at KATU had asked me if I wouldn’t miss being on television, I answered honestly. “I’ll miss the work. I’ll miss the thrill of chasing down great stories. I just can’t miss any more of my daughter’s ballet recitals.”
    The offices had been custom built for the launch of the new talk radio station. The staff had been pulled from prime stations all across the city. Two producers sat across from me, next to a computer screen, ready to take calls. Sunlight beamed through floor-to-ceiling glass windows. I’d negotiated better pay, and even better, hours that would allow me to tuck Sophie in and be there in the afternoon to pick her up. Plus I had my own talk radio show, discussing politics and issues that I considered important. It was a startup station, a place where I could redefine myself.
    â€œGood morning,” I said into the microphone. “This is Sheila Hamilton.”
    I was driving to work when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The CBS news cut-in interrupted the song I’d been listening to on the radio, something from the Barenaked Ladies. “How odd that a plane could be that off course,” I thought at first. I’d worked in New York several weeks in my twenties, helping ABC with a documentary on a Utah outdoor wilderness camp that was under investigation for child abuse. I’d stood at the top of the World Trade Center. I knew the flight pattern. Planes were not supposed to get that close.
    By the time the second plane hit the second tower, I was watching it live on television, disbelieving the surreal screams and the terror the news anchors themselves were attempting to mask.
    Nothing in my journalism career had prepared me for this day. I’d been witness to what I thought was the worst disaster I would ever see, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger , when the engineers at Utah’s Morton Thiokol had gathered to see the first teacher off to space. It was one of the first national assignments I’d been given; it was supposed to be a fluff story, engineers attending another routine shuttle launch. It was, instead, the first story that would sear a memory into my brain so clearly that I can recall the temperature, the smells, the way the plumes parted as the rocket boosters headed off in different directions in the sky.
    I opened the microphone, my hands shaking. The music bed faded. My earphones pressed tightly against my ears. My producer eyed me warily