A ten-year-old girl got her ham radio license four days after 9/11. A broadcast engineer never made it out of the room he refused to leave. Two ham radio operators, the same week — two very different endings.
Steve Jacobson, N2SJ, kept Channel 11 on the air from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower for over twenty years — through the 1993 bombing, through equipment failures he fixed with his own shoelaces, right up until September 11th, 2001.
Four days later, ten-year-old Beverly Holtz, KC2IKT, got her license in the mail and ran a Red Cross shelter’s entire radio link by herself — the very first time she’d ever been on the air.
This is both of their stories.
If you want more of these, subscribe. And if you were licensed back then, or know someone who served with their radio that week, put it in the comments — some of the best stories from that week never made it into any magazine.
CHAPTERS
00:00 In 1993, he stayed
00:31 The morning of September 11th
01:41 Two stories, on the record
01:57 Steve Jacobson, N2SJ
03:39 A ten-year-old on Long Island
05:04 “We can do that”
05:57 Eight hours, alone
07:05 The other six
07:53 A callsign comes back
08:28 It wasn’t just the two of them
09:01 What the whole country did
10:05 More stories like this one
SOURCES
ARRL/QST Magazine, “9/11/01: This Is Not a Test,” November 2001
https://www.arrl.org/files/file/WTC.pdf
eham.net, “Amateurs Among the Missing in World Trade Center Attack”
https://www.eham.net/article/2501
ARRL, 20th anniversary notice on amateur radio operators lost on 9/11
https://www.arrl.org/news/view/20th-anniversary-of-9-11
Steven Jacobson obituary and tribute, “A Transmitter Marvel”
https://obits.postandcourier.com/us/obituaries/charleston/name/steven-jacobson-obituary?id=61006507
PIX11, remembering Steve Jacobson, 25 years later
https://pix11.com/news/local-news/pix11-remembers-its-very-own-steve-jacobson-beloved-employee-killed-on-9-11/
“Effect of a National Disaster on Blood Supply and Safety: The September 11 Experience”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12734136/
“9/11 Opened Up Flag Market to Foreign Manufacturers”
https://www.kfvs12.com/story/15395637/911-opened-up-flag-market-to-foreign-manufacturers/
“Blood Donations Dwindle in US After Post-Sept. 11 Wastage Publicized,” CMAJ
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC128413/
IMAGE CREDITS
Historical photographs via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licenses — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Additional footage licensed via Envato Elements.
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