In my six decades, I remember two things so clearly, I can still smell the air I was breathing those days.

The first was Nov. 22, 1963. The day President John Kennedy was shot.

The second was September 11, 2001. The day Al Qaeda attacked America.

For the first, I was a college freshman living in a basement dorm room of Fulton Hall at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. I had jumped into college with the same gusto I’d shown in high school, where I was among the leaders of our small school in Gwinner. That’s why me and my E-flat-alto saxophone were members of the University of North Dakota Band.

Until that moment, my most memorable college event was that three weeks earlier, I’d played “Hail to the Chief” for the visit of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I remember crying as I walked home, thinking someday I’d brag about this to my children and grandchildren.

And now here I was, listening to a piercing scream, my hairbrush raised over my head to tease my long brown hair, thinking I’d forgotten how to breathe. The pink radio my parents gave me was telling the horrible story that “shots were fired” at the president’s motorcade in Dallas.

The scream was coming from a fellow student, but it was a strange thing to hear, since I’d just had a bad dream that had ended with this same horrible scream. It had woken me up. But this was no dream. My friend was screaming with such volume that although her room was four doors down, she could have been standing almost next to me.

I dropped to my single bed, up against the basement window and the front of my blouse was already wet before I realized I was crying. The normal musty smell of this room seemed even stronger now. My hairbrush was lying on the floor.

My dorm door was open, and now I saw friends were running down the hall toward the common room where we had the only television on the floor. And it was there I watched Walter Cronkite almost lose it—Uncle Walter, the most trusted and respected man in America; a rock for us all; the voice that could calm you in a moment of terror; this man was as close to tears as anyone would ever see him as he announced that John F. Kennedy was dead.

For the next 48 years, it was American shorthand to ask “Where were you?” and everyone knew what you meant.

That changed on 9-11. Now I was a television commentator with Channel 3 in Phoenix, Arizona. I had five minutes every day on Good Morning Arizona, and that meant getting up about 5 and getting to the station by 6 so I could go on at 7:15 with my three “hot talk” items of the day. In the routine of my day, I climbed out of bed in my own home and turned on the bedroom television while I showered in the adjoining bathroom and kept track of what was happening as this night person tried to get it together to appear like a morning person.

I had been working on a commentary decrying how Tempe wanted to build a football stadium within the flight path of Sky Harbor Airport, and of course, I’d make fun of how dangerous this could be and what was Tempe smokin’ to be unaware of the problem.

I rushed into the bedroom as I heard the first reports that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. It was 5:46 a.m., Arizona time. Like most of the world, I instantly thought this was an accident–a horrible example of what can happen when a plane goes awry, and as I watched the first scenes, my initial thought was: “Say goodbye to the football stadium, Tempe!”

I rushed to get ready and headed out the door just after 6 a.m. My car radio is always tuned to NPR, and that’s where I heard there was a second plane that crashed into the second tower at 6:03, Arizona time. It was the first time it occurred to me that we were under attack.

By the time I ran into our newsroom at Channel 3 on 7th Avenue, a plane was crashing into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. It was 6:37, Arizona Time.

Everyone was gathered in a control room asthe national feed was trying to make sense of what was happening. At the controls that day was our executive producer, who was carrying on between her sobs. She had a cousin who worked in the World Trade Center. I put my hand on her shoulder as we watched him die when the South Tower collapsed at 6:69. She was bawling now, but never left her post; never abandoned her duty as an American journalist on a day that would forever change America. I stayed by her as we heard that a plane had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. It was 7:07, Arizona time. And I was still there as we watched the Scond Tower collapse at 7:28.

It was 102 minutes of hell for America.

That was 11 years ago today. I can still smell the air in that Channel 3 control room.