On Sept. 11, 2001, longtime CBS News writer/producer Greg Kandra arrived at the network’s West 57th Street New York City office, having mentally run through the things he had to do that day.
Immediately, he noticed his colleagues looking out the ninth floor window towards downtown Manhattan. Everyone could see the smoke from where the unimaginable had happened: two airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers. The day’s plans were quickly put aside.
Kandra recalled, “I got called to go over to the newsroom, to write special reports for Dan Rather for the rest of the day. And I watched those towers fall again and again and again over the next 12 or 13 hours that we were there, writing special reports. We were there until a little after 1:00 in the morning… It was very intense and very sobering.”
Until that day, Kandra had been a Catholic who checked off the requisite boxes of going to Mass every week and on special holidays, but there wasn’t any real depth to his faith life. That began to change in the days that followed.