by Eric Nodler, Abington, PA

The premise was simple. Get the USA some entertainment to stop the constant flow of news from the attacks in NYC on 9/11/2001 on television. Some in the media thought the United States wasn’t ready for it, yet in hindsight we really were. David Letterman was one of the first late night shows to come back on the air. The mood of the country was of persistent sadness, confusion and fear.

I will never forget the night of 9/18/2001. My mood was of that of the general population — sad. I was living outside NYC at the time in Northern NJ. I would look out my window and see the World Trade Center’s never ending smoke blowing over the city like a scenario in a disaster movie, but this was real and in my backyard. Correction, in ALL of our backyards! I was watching something different that evening to escape the constant news stories of people missing and happened to turn on David Letterman. He announced that Tori Amos was going to be singing a song from her then-new album “Strange Little Girls.”

I was and have always been a fan of Tori Amos so I decided to listen to her. Tori was sitting at her piano on stage and singing the song “Time” and the words and the moment just resonated through my heart and my mind. I knew that I was not the only one overcome by the emotion of the performance that I was watching before my eyes. I sat there listening to the words, relating them to what was going on in our country and allowed myself to be overcome by emotion. The tears were rolling down my face in a way that I have not had happen in nearly 20 years when I was a boy. I looked next to me in my bedroom and my then-girlfriend was having the same emotion. We looked at each other and without saying a word and knew what each other was thinking. The performance was without words and without peers. It was exactly what we needed to hear, as I am sure the people who were lucky enough to catch the performance needed to hear as well.

When the performance was over, the audience gave a thunderous applause and David Letterman himself was a mess on stage. I knew then that I was watching a historical performance that would not only affect me for the rest of my life but millions of others as well.

I hope this story adds to our society’s most memorable moments and I thank WXPN for allowing us to share it. I have not talked about this in almost 6 years and with the 6-year anniversary coming up very soon I thought it would be profound. Keep the great music playing, and the listeners listing we need it to define who we are, where we were and where we are going.