Most everyone can recall where they were on 9/11, and business and industry leaders in western Kentucky were no exception.
“I think everybody remembers the significant dates in their lives and I certainly remember 9/11 and just being shocked when we heard the news,” said Elaine Spalding, who was president of the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce at that time.
“It was just terrible. We huddled with our business leaders right away.”
Spalding, now the president of the chamber of commerce in Salisbury, North Carolina, noted that chambers of commerce typically are conducting their total resource campaigns and membership efforts in the fall of the year.
“We were trying to figure out, do we continue trying to invite people to join the chamber and all of the other sponsorships and stuff you do in a campaign? It just didn’t seem appropriate to try and do the normal sort of invitations that we would do and so we had a real discussion about that. We talked about the best way to go forward,” she said.
“So many of the businesses in and around the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant at that time dealt a lot with Washington, D.C., and everybody has friends, co-workers that were being affected, so it was just a tragic time for everyone.”
Spalding remembers the organization electing to kind of take a “pause.”
“We did everything that we could from the standpoint of the local business community to support our friends and just stop and pray to thank everyone that was defending our country. There was certainly that overwhelming emotion of being proud of our country, and really doing everything we could to support the men and women in the service.
“There were so many people that enlisted in the military because of 9/11. Paducah has the Coast Guard and a lot of retired military because of the gaseous diffusion plant site, so we just did everything we could to show our support for our country and our community and anyone who was involved in the tragic events of 9/11,” she said.
Sandra Wilson, the current Paducah chamber president, was public affairs manager at the NewPage paper mill in Wickliffe at the time.
“That morning I had attended the Ballard County Chamber of Commerce breakfast in LaCenter and was driving to the paper mill when I began to hear the news on the radio. I remember walking into the administrative offices and everyone was moving around trying to find out more information,” she said.
“At that time we did not have TVs in offices or training rooms with cable access. Some of us gathered in one of the conference rooms to watch the news and determine what was going on. This was before we had instant communications with employees, but it was not long before news…
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