I  was sent to New York on 9/11 and left from Virginia Beach with a camera crew at mid-day.  All flights were grounded, so we drove. We stopped first in a largely deserted Washington. I remember it feeling like I was in a real life Hollywood "end of the world" movie.

We arrived in Newark around midnight and could see from across the river the dust cloud hovering over lower Manhattan, illuminated by the work lights from ground zero. I have said many times that it seemed to me to be a reminder of the presence of God.

The bridges and tunnels into Manhattan were closed, so we continued north some 20 miles, crossing over at Tarrytown and headed back down into Yonkers. We talked our way through some police road blocks and into the Bronx, and then drove down into the deserted streets of New York City in the early hours of September 12.

All of Manhattan smelled of an electrical fire, and that ubiquitous gray dust from the remains of the World Trade Center was blowing through the air and down the streets.

We went to ground zero and interviewed police officers and watched dump truck after dump truck carry debris away from the crater.

The next morning after a live shot we walked to Washington Square and saw all the desperate notices with photos pinned to a wall at the memorial. "Have you seen?" spouses, fathers, mothers, friends, brothers, sisters; all who had worked in the World Trade Center.

I think about that feeling that I was somehow in an "end of the world" movie. It certainly was the end of one world, and the beginning of another. It was the end of a world in which we felt invulnerable to the forces that have for so long wanted to kill us. It was the beginning of a new world in which those of us who experienced 9/11 would never again take national security for granted.