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“MY FIRST THOUGHTS were of a movie about a nuclear war and then I thought of photos that I’d seen of Hiroshima after the bomb.”
AMERICAN LEAGUE
YANKEES 6 BLUE JAYS 4 RED SOX 12 RANGERS 7 TIGERS 9 WHITE SOX 8 NATIONAL LEAGUE
PIRATES 7 CUBS 5 IL BASEBALL
PAWSOX 12 SWB YANKS 7 IRISH FALL Kayvon Webster returned a fumble 96 yards for an early touchdown as South Florida came to Notre Dame and stunned the 16th-ranked Irish 23-20 Saturday in a game disrupted for hours because of storms. Webster’s return for a score four minutes into the game took all the momentum from the Irish and they couldn’t recover. It came after Notre Dame had taken the opening kickoff and drove to the USF 1. The game lasted 5 hours, 59 minutes. Page 1C
INSIDE A NEWS: Local 3A Nation & World 5A Obituaries 2A, 10A B PEOPLE: Birthdays 10B C SPORTS : Scoreboard 2C Outdoors 12C D BUSINESS: Stocks 6D E VIEWS: Editorials 2E F ETC: Puzzles 2F Books 5F Travel 6F G CLASSIFIED
WEATHER Mason Antonik Partly sunny, showers. High 88, Low 65. Details, Page 14C
AP PHOTO
Smoke billows from a tower of the World Trade Center and flames and debris explode from the second tower on Sept. 11, 2001 after it was hit by a plane hijacked by terrorists. Both towers were brought down in the attacks. For profiles of local people who experienced that day, see Pages 8A and 9A.
Wilkes grad recalls her desperate flight By BILL O’BOYLE
boboyle@timesleader.com
Millions of people were transfixed watching televised reports as the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks unfolded in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Thousands in New York City that day were close enough to feel and smell the smoke and dust spewing from
the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Yoshiko Shoji Reeves couldn’t have been any closer. She was in the North Tower when it was stuck by a commercial jet that had been hijacked by See 9/11, Page 9A
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Nearly 10 years ago, on a clear September morning, America was targeted by hatred aimed at the heart of our country. Terrorists – fanatical and deranged and willing to die – hijacked four commercial airlines intent on crashing into icons of democracy and capitalism. The World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were targets. Passengers fought back on the fourth flight, which crashed
near Shanksville, Pa. Office workers, police, firefighters, transit authority personnel, passengers and pedestrians: Nearly 3,000 died. But 10 years later, a country’s spirit remains. Starting today and continuing through next Sunday, The Times Leader will bring you the stories of local people who were touched by the attacks and the following days of fear and recovery. Some witnessed the destruction, others quickly
A day that changed America forever By DAVID GOLDSTEIN McClatchy Newspapers
A changed America: Sept. 11 has made an indelible impact on the American psyche. The day began in crystalline sunlight and endlessly blue skies, but soon whipsawed into a decade of war, economic meltdown and deep political division. Ten years after Islamic terrorists hijacked passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, the America that See DAY, Page 14A
volunteered to help and still others felt the loss of a loved one. Sept. 11, 2001 carries a unique meaning for each of them, as it does for everyone who is old enough to remember the sight of our nation under attack. Other stories this week will recount how the response to the attacks has changed local fire and police departments, air travel and even the population of the region.
Area still benefits from jobs program created during Depression But there was a fedWPA put unemployed people eral program estabto work at useful public lished in 1935 called projects, gave them paycheck. the Works Progress By TOM MOONEY Special to The Times Leader
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Yoshiko Reeves, left, reaches to help another survivor as they escape the North Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Reeves was working on the tower’s 80th floor the day of the terrorist attack.
When young Dolores Sigismondi’s father, Mose, suffered an injury while working in the mines in the late 1930s, the consequences could have been devastating for the Luzerne family, which included seven children. Most of the social legislation we take for granted today was still on the Washington drawing board at that point in the Great Depression, and the nation’s unemployment rate stood at about 20 percent.
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series about the Depression-era Works Progress Administration that employed thousands locally. Tomorrow, how current elected officials feel about the potential value of a similar program today.
unemployed. “That money was very important,” said Dolores (Sigismondi) Brown, now 80. “We didn’t have welfare like today. My father didn’t even get compensation when he got hurt.” Mose’s injuries, incurred at the Harry E Colliery in Swoyersville when rock fell on him, made most physical work impossible. But WPA found a position for him, carrying water to the WPA crews paving the dirt streets of Luzerne. Although Mose later got a job CLARK VAN ORDEN/THE TIMES LEADER at Bethlehem Steel, commuting Thomas Domboski stands near the Toby Creek ponding area just
Administration, better known by its acronym WPA. Its function was to put unemployed people to work at useful public projects and give them a paycheck – about $19 a month. At the height of its operations, in the late 1930s, thousands of Wyoming Valley residents had found employment through WPA. By the time the program ended in 1943, the midpoint of World War II, it had provided work and pay for an estimated 8.5 million Americans who might otherwise have been See WPA, Page 14A
off Union Street in Luzerne, a WPA project from the 1930s that his brothers worked on.