Thousands of people missing, countless dead, scores of emergency service workers searching through rubble -- and I'm supposed to go on TV and talk about sports? At a time like this, who in the world cares what Steve Spurrier thinks about national healing?

Like the rest of America, everyone at ESPN could not be more horrified by the atrocities in Washington and New York City, my hometown. I grew up on Staten Island, and even across New York Harbor, the Twin Towers were a constant in our lives. Even now, I can't believe I'm writing of the Towers in the past tense. You could see them from the north shore of the Island, from the Staten Island Ferry, from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. I went to the Towers on school trips and puffed my chest with pride when I brought out-of-town friends there.

Now the Twin Towers lie in pieces, like all of our hearts and minds. A friend I've known since the second grade, who probably went with me on one of those school trips, watched the first plane plow into the north tower. He lives on the 24th floor of a building facing south, and heard a plane fly so loudly overhead, he thought it went through his apartment. From his terrace, he watched in horror as the plane banked left and into the north tower.

Another of my Staten Island buddies worked in the Trade Center, and bolted when the second plane hit the south tower. Meanwhile, the parents of another buddy, on a midmorning stroll in Battery Park, witnessed the second plane go in and ran for their lives. Fortunately, that's as close as this tragedy came to touching my inner circle of family and friends. Since then, I've gone to sleep every night thanking God for that. My father was working on Staten Island at the time; Mom was at home in New Jersey. I was sleeping off a late Monday night of SportsCenter when my girlfriend, Suzy, called from California to tell me I needed to wake up and turn on the TV.

Some wake-up call.

After taking in the carnage, I went to work just to be with people. There was little actual work to be done. Peter Jennings, of all people, was the anchor on ESPN. One night later, I found myself back on the SportsCenter set and, quite honestly, conflicted. In what possible way could sports be germane under these circumstances?

So, with some trepidation, I took my seat at the anchor desk and brought along a security blanket of sorts: a photo taken on the Trade Center Observation Deck Aug. 18 -- a little more than three weeks before the disaster. That day, my brother Jeffrey, his wife, Andrea, and I relived our childhood memories by providing one for their children. We took their 7-year-old son, Lee, and 4-year-old daughter, Emily, up to the top of the south tower. We looked out the window and followed the cars that seemed like ants. Wow! Look! Tall buildings that aren't even half as tall as we are! What a day!

The photo is of Lee looking out the window, a young man from Southern California as high up in a building as he has ever been, his head cocked a bit, imagining who knows what. In the bottom right-hand corner, Emily tries to sneak a peek under his arm (that's me at lower left). It is something out of Norman Rockwell, though it was snapped by their mother. And three weeks later, that building is no more. Had we been there on the day the planes came, we would be no more. All because we wanted to take a couple of sweet kids up to the top for a little fun.

After the attack, Lee had to be told something before he went off to hear who knows what at school. So Jeff told him that some bad people did a bad thing to the Twin Towers, and now they were gone. "It's a good thing we weren't there that day," Lee said. Then he asked if the Lincoln Tunnel was all right. Yes, Lee, the tunnel is all right.

Thank heaven for that.

This article appears in the October 1 issue of ESPN The Magazine.