Mike Kelly, the veteran journalist whose column has been a fixture in The Record since 1988, has been covering the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks since he arrived in lower Manhattan by boat from Jersey City on the afternoon of that fateful Tuesday.

Kelly has covered nearly aspect of the attacks from day one until now, 25 years later. Kelly has penned hundreds of columns. covering the emergency response, the vast recovery effort, victims' funerals, the war on terror, the investigations, the connections to New Jersey, the legal and civil cases that have followed and so much more.

He is, simply, an expert on Sept. 11 and his new book, "After Ground Zero: Everyday Americans and the Unhealed Scars of 9/11," published this month by Bloomsbury, marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks through conversations with first responders, victims' loved ones and those who've been part of various inquiries.

The book is a chronicle of what Kelly has called his journey with 9/11 — a two-and-a-half decade commitment to covering the story of the attacks and their impacts.

I spoke with Kelly just as "After Ground Zero" published about his reporting, the book and its characters and his perspectives on how the attacks will be a permanent part of life in and around New York city.

Question: When you talk about Sept. 11, you often describe a journey — one that started on the day of the attacks as you faced a deadline for your column in The Record and one that continues on, even now, decades later. How did that journey begin?

Mike Kelly: In the beginning, I did not see my coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as a journey — certainly not the intense journey that it has become 25 years later. Nor did I imagine that I would someday feel compelled to write a book about the attacks, especially a book like “After Ground Zero,” which traces the impact of 9/11 over so many years and with so many ordinary people.

My journey actually began in chaos and confusion — and the basic journalistic desire to make my way to the Trade Center on the day of the attacks and then file a thoughtful and coherent column by the evening deadline that described what had taken place, while also touching on the historical meaning and the impact on ordinary people and challenges for our nation. In many ways, my experience that day typifies the kind of unplanned nature of breaking news that governs the lives of so many journalists. Often, our work is completely unplanned and captive to the whirlwinds of breaking news. Sept. 11, 2001 was that kind of day.

I got to the newsroom around 8:15 a.m. I had worked all weekend and late the night before, so I was hoping for an easy day. Just after 8:46 a.m., after I listened to an angry voicemail from then-Gov. Donald DeFrancesco who was complaining about a recent column and as I tried to answer a few letters from readers, our morning news editor, Susan DeSantis, called to me from her desk across the newsroom: “Mike, I just heard a plane hit the World Trade Center.”

Susan’s words still resonate with me all these years later.

My desk was near a window. I turned and saw smoke pouring from the Trade Center’s North Tower 13 miles away in lower Manhattan. I figured a small plane, perhaps with a daredevil pilot flying between the two towers, accidentally crashed. But when I walked across the newsroom to turn on a TV and saw the massive hole in the North Tower, I knew instantly that this was no small plane. Indeed, this was a major news story that would dominate everything else that day.

I fetched my backpack and ran to my car. 

Traffic was heavy, especially as I neared the Lincoln Tunnel. I got off the highway and drove through back streets to Jersey City. I parked my car and ran to the waterfront. Then, I jumped on a tugboat with police officers, firefighters, EMTs and Catholic priests that took me across the Hudson.  I walked into Ground Zero an hour after the towers fell. 

Question: “After Ground Zero” is a major marker on that journey. As we approach........

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