I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
Sept. 13, 2001
By Devlyn Brooks
Staff Writer
The telephone calls came like gifts from heaven.
The gifts: relatives who were in New York City or Washington, D.C., calling to tell frightened family members they were OK.
As with the rest of the nation, many Bemidji families had loved ones who had reason to be at or near the World Trade Center or the Pentagon on Tuesday. And like the rest of the country, many local families spent agonizing hours wondering if their loved ones were safe because the nation's overburdened telecommunications system made communication difficult after the terrorist attacks.
Bemidji's Nina Heilman, the 79-year-old mother of Army Brig. Gen. William P. Heilman who works at the Pentagon, summed up the feelings many local people had before they finally were assured their family members were alive.
"I was going wild as I couldn't get through (to him on the telephone)," Heilman said about her son, who graduated from Bemidji High School in 1968. "I didn't know what was happening because I had been sleeping when it started."
She later found out through a relay of about four family members that her son was indeed alive and well.
"He was OK. He called his wife (after the attack) and left a message that he was OK," she said a relative later told her on the phone. "Today, I'm very tired, but happy."
That scenario repeated itself throughout the Bemidji community on Tuesday.
Bob Welle, whose son Peter worked in one of the smaller World Trade Center buildings, got a call from his son about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, only minutes after his son had escaped from his office.
Peter Welle, a BHS graduate about 20 years ago, is an investment compliance officer with a firm that formerly was housed in World Trade Center Tower No. 7.
Bob Welle, a retired Bemidji banker, said he hadn't even heard of the deadly attacks until he walked into a downtown business and heard the first reports of the attacks in New York.
He returned home to watch the news unfold, but he only had to wait about 30 minutes to hear from his son. After the first explosion in the nearby 110-story tower, his son's tower was evacuated, Bob Welle said. So, his son gathered a few personal belongings, left the building and started walking to his home about 1.5 miles away. Later Tuesday, even though it wasn't directly hit, Peter Welle's office building crumbled to the ground.
"Fortunately he was OK. It was a real relief to know he was safe," Bob Welle said, his voice cracking with emotion. "It was a terrible, terrible, terrible tragedy."
North Country Regional Hospital nurse Emilie Peterson only had to wait for about an hour to hear the good news that her son survived the Pentagon attack, but the wait wasn't easy.
She said she was at work on Tuesday morning when she learned that a plane crashed into the Pentagon, where her son, Air Force Capt. Ty Peterson, had an office.
Peterson said she tried to stay at work Tuesday, but was later sent home when a replacement nurse was found. At home, she said she and her husband were glued to the television, looking for any bit of news about their son.
Luckily, however, their son had been talking to his wife at the time of the crash and he was able to tell her that he was being evacuated from the building. His wife, Kelly, who is also from Bemidji, then called her mother here. Her mom then called the Peterson home with the good news. Finally, about 2 p.m. Tuesday, Ty Peterson called home to talk with his parents.
"We were very concerned. ... It's hard to express how we felt (before he called)," she said. "But we were very grateful he is OK. Very thankful."
Although she doesn't work in the Pentagon, Holly Cook's telephone call home to her mom, Lorena Cook, was nonetheless a miracle.
Speaking on her cell phone from Washington, D.C., Wednesday night, Cook described how she was sitting in her car on the freeway next to the Pentagon when it was struck Tuesday morning.
Cook, who works for a Washington law firm, said she was on her way to work when the attack happened. She said she had heard on television about the attacks in New York before leaving for work, but she still had no clue as to what had happened in Washington when it happened.
Sometime while she was sitting in traffic on the freeway, the plane had flown overhead and crashed into the building.
"I didn't see the plane actually hit, but when I looked off to the Pentagon, I saw black smoke rolling out of the Pentagon," she said. "Literally for those few minutes, I felt a sense of terror. I thought this was it. ... I thought they were bombing D.C. and here I was sitting next to the Pentagon."
Cook said the traffic on the freeway jammed immediately and moved at a snail's pace. She said she tried to exit into the District of Columbia, but it basically had been cordoned off and so she had to turn around and head home. She ended up spending nearly three hours on the freeway that morning just to return home.
But, while she was in traffic, she was able to use her cell phone a few times and was able to contact her fiancé in Washington and her mom in Bemidji. She said she contacted her mom before she had even heard the news of the attack on Washington so her mom wasn't as terrified as other relatives might have been.
"It was eerie sitting in the traffic not knowing what was going on," Cook said about her time on the freeway. "It was disconcerting to see the Pentagon on fire. Who would have ever thought we'd see that in our lifetime."
As exciting a moment it was for all of the local families who heard from their loved ones on Tuesday, however, there was another feeling that permeated all of the phone calls.
From Nina Heilman to Bob Welle and the Petersons and the Cooks, no one felt right celebrating in light of the devastating number of people who were presumed dead.
"Our hearts go out to everyone who has loved ones who aren't so sure (of their whereabouts)," said Emilie Peterson. "We feel sorrow for the people who don't know. That tempers our excitement."
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