Editor’s note: I wrote this story in late winter 2002 after speaking at a scholastic journalism workshop in Somerset and interviewing local journalists and residents. It was originally published in March on the six-month anniversary of the attacks.

Jim Oliver saw the “Breaking News” bulletin on CNN and some smoke coming out of a building as he grabbed a leash and bounded out the door to take the dog for a morning walk.

The 33-year newsroom veteran is usually at his desk at the Daily American by 9:30 a.m. But when he returned from the walk and saw video of a second plane flying into the south tower of the World Trade Center, he knew he had better get to the newsroom as quickly as possible.

As he made the 15-minute drive from his house to the center of Somerset, he wondered how he and his staff would localize the tragic events in New York City for his local readers.

By 10 that morning, localizing the story would no longer be a problem.

Daily American correspondent Robert Leverknight lives on Lambertsville Road, just outside Shanksville, about 11 miles northeast of Somerset. On Sept. 11, he was in West Virginia and had taken his camera with him.

His wife, Kelly, was at home that morning when she heard a low-flying airplane. She ran outside just in time to see the belly of a passenger plane fly over her house and smash into a nearby field.

She and a neighbor drove immediately to the crash site, then realized she didn’t have a camera. Returning to her house, she was unable to find her husband’s camera, so she grabbed a family point-and-shoot camera and ran out the door. But emergency vehicles were blocking the access roads she had just traveled.

She began shooting film from her porch. Her photo ran on the front page of the Daily American the next morning.

Just before 10 a.m., scanners in the Daily American newsroom jumped to life.

“Large aircraft down,” said the 911 dispatcher.

Fire department sirens throughout the community began to wail.

Jim Oliver, his arm still in a cast from an accident in August, called his courthouse reporter, who was expecting to cover a routine commissioners’ meeting that morning. Oliver told her to get to the Emergency Management Center as quickly as possible.

Then he started to call in his night crew.

City editor Brian Whipkey works the night shift at the Daily American, the 13,500-circulation morning newspaper serving 79,500 residents of Somerset County.

The morning of Sept. 11, Whipkey was home supervising the drilling of a new water well at his home. Sometime after 10 a.m., he noticed his answering machine blinking like crazy.

His well drilling was over for the day.

Community news editor Madolin Edwards had been working for several nights on a senior citizen health supplement edition for the Sept. 12 Daily American.

At home the morning of Sept. 11, Edwards called her brother after the first plane hit the World Trade Center. As they talked, the second plane struck.

Edwards ended her conversation with her brother and called Jim Oliver, who told her she had better come to work early.

She would spend the day handling whatever routine news found its way into the Daily American while Oliver and Whipkey handled the plane crash and terrorist attacks.

The senior citizen supplement ran Sept. 12 as planned.

Nothing ever happens in Somerset, the seat of a 1,074.8-square-mile county two hours west of Harrisburg on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

The area is rural and was at one time a soft-coal strip-mining area. The strippings have been backfilled, and two large abandoned draglines rest on top of the hill overlooking the Flight 93 crash site and temporary memorial, their rusting towers raised to the sky.

Two years ago, Somerset County made the news when three tornadoes hit the area hard in a three-day span. Tornadoes are a rarity in hilly terrain like that around Somerset.

“We sent people out and handled multiple stories,” says Edwards, “but I don’t think there’s anything that can prepare you for something like the Flight 93 crash.”

After the 9:58 a.m. crash, all five full-time staff members jumped into action.

The courthouse reporter gathered news from the county’s Emergency Management officials. The lifestyle editor went directly to the crash scene and came back with eyewitness reports. Two additional reporters were sent to the scene.

Another reporter was sent to Johnstown for a press conference with regional air traffic controllers.

In late afternoon, Gov. Tom Ridge visited the crash site.

“We were just lucky to have people in place and someone levelheaded like Jim Oliver who could get things taken care of,” Edwards says.

Somerset’s phone system slowed to a crawl that morning.

“Our biggest problem that day was dealing with all the inquiries while trying to figure out what we were going to do,” recalls Whipkey.

Calls came into the newsroom from around the world asking for directions and details. CNN called for a locator map. A journalist from Israel called to get coordinates so he could get a satellite to photograph the area from space.

“There wasn’t really too much to report from the crash site,” Whipkey says. “Everyone rushed out there, but there wasn’t too much to do. When a plane hits the ground at 600 miles per hour ... no bodies. No screaming survivors.”

Because the Daily American is a morning newspaper, editor Jim Oliver did not want to wait for a full news cycle to begin publishing stories.

By 2 p.m., the newspaper’s webmaster, Jennifer Thomas, posted the first story and photo on the Daily American’s website. The site’s password-protection system was dropped so more people could have access to the information.

By early evening, most of the eight first-day coverage stories were written and carefully edited to avoid duplication and to assure clarity.

“We wanted to make sure our readers had all the information they needed without upsetting them too much,” Edwards explains.

“We’re a conservative paper,” Whipkey says. “We’re a family newspaper, so we watch all our stories. We want the kids to be able to read our paper.”

That night, the Daily American went to press 10 minutes early.

A second press run was ordered after the regular 1 a.m. run was finished when vendors quickly sold out of their usual supply of newspapers.

For the next few days, routine news stopped. Local activities stopped.

“Everyone was drawn into the story,” says Whipkey. “It dominated everyone’s thoughts for the first several days.”

First lady Laura Bush, Lynn Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Sen. Rick Santorum came to Somerset County.

A media village sprang up less than a mile from the crash site along Lambertsville Road.

The Salvation Army accepted food donations and fed both emergency workers and media.

The Red Cross handled the families of Flight 93 victims as they began arriving in the area.

A memorial service was held at the Somerset County Courthouse that Friday evening.

Follow-up stories in the Daily American continued nonstop for two weeks. Daily American reporters worked side-by-side with reporters from wire services, big-city newspapers and national networks.

Whipkey says the local reporters were treated fairly, though some crash-site officials seemed to want to talk more to television reporters than to print journalists.

And no one at the American liked the reference to the crash site as being “near Pittsburgh,” which is really 80 miles away.

“We’re a town here,” Whipkey says adamantly.

On Oct. 12, the Daily American ran a special supplement – a collection of stories that had run in the newspaper in the days and weeks following the crash.

Flight 93 stories continue to run in the Daily American, though less often.

Two weeks ago, Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller released the remains of Flight 93 victims to their families. The crash site remains off-limits and is patrolled by security guards.

Last week, the Daily American carried a story about Stoneycreek supervisors gearing up for expected visitors for today’s six-month anniversary of the crash.

Hundreds of people visit the temporary United Flight 93 Memorial just off Skyline Drive each week.

“They try to get as close as they can,” explains Edwards, “but the site itself is still considered a crime scene.”

Hundreds of messages and personal items have been left by visitors. Much of the memorial material is being preserved by local historians for future display.

Flagpoles and American flags dot Shanksville lawns, and the editors have had time to reflect on covering a story of a lifetime.

“It’s hard to realize that something of such a grand scale could happen in such a rural setting,” says Whipkey. “I think it’s made us all a little more cautious ... a little less accepting.”

The city editor says he recalls having an uneasy feeling all that September day.

“I kept wondering what was coming next? Was it all over?” Whipkey says. “And I’m not sure that uneasy feeling has gone away.”

Editor Jim Oliver has served on several workshop panels discussing Sept. 11 coverage.

“Everyone pitched in, worked hard, wrote good stories,” he tells his audiences. “We did what we could.”

But the full impact of what the Daily American staff had accomplished in September didn’t fully hit Oliver until he began collecting material to enter several state and regional writing competitions for professional journalists.

“Wow!” he says he found himself thinking. “This is really something.”

Oliver was so impressed with his staff’s work that, on a whim, he entered their coverage in the Pulitzer Prize competition.

“I think it’s important for my staff to know that they’ve done some really good work and that they are deserving of serious consideration for the Pulitzer,” Oliver says.

As life returns to normal in Somerset County, life in the Daily American newsroom has done likewise.

Oliver says he and his staff are keeping the events of Sept. 11 in perspective.

“Yes, this was a big story and heroic people died here,” he says, “but life goes on and we have to keep on printing what local people expect from us.

“Our real job is covering the news in Somerset County. We’ve still got some great stories to write about.”