Peter Laufer’s essays and documentary photographs capture crossing America the week of 9/11, ten years later and then 20 years after the attacks is published by Schiffer Publishing.

“Sheila! Is Peter okay?”

The call came not long after six in the morning, California time, waking up my wife. It was

September 11, 2001, and the call was from our friend Milan, who lived in Puerto Vallarta.

“Is Peter okay?” he asked again.

Sheila, groggy from being awakened, didn’t understand the unexpected call. Why would

Milan in Mexico be asking about my well–being? But Milan knew I was in Washington,

DC, and he was watching television. He told Sheila there were terrorist attacks in New

York and the capital. She initially thought he was attempting some sort of bizarre joke.

After telling Milan that, last she heard, I was fine, she hung up and then checked her mes-

sages. There was indeed one from me sent just after 9:00 a.m. East Coast time.

“The Pentagon was attacked,” I was speaking fast. “And the Twin Towers in New York. I’m

okay. I’ll call again later.”

We were accustomed to such brief exchanges—“I’m okay, are you?”—from flash points

most everywhere. I’m a journalist, and, for years, as an NBC News correspondent and as

a freelancer, I reported on catastrophes and crises all over the world. I followed cocaine

trafficking from the jungles of Bolivia to the streets of East Oakland, covered the civil

wars in Central America, circled the globe interviewing Americans held in foreign prisons,

watched the fall of the Berlin Wall while chipping out a few souvenir pieces for myself,

experienced the revolutions across eastern Europe, reported on rustlers of endangered

turtles in Africa and Southeast Asia, interviewed Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet inva-

sion of their homeland. The list is long—these are just some sample examples. But none of

these assignments prepared me for 9/11. I always held a ticket home from calamities. This

time the ticket did me no good. Just after the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Penta-

gon, just after Milan called Sheila, all flights back home to San Francisco were grounded.