Where were you on 9/11?

Twenty-five years after the terror attacks, here’s a look at how journalists at The Salt Lake Tribune worked to inform Utah readers that day, and in the days that followed.

The Sept. 12, 2001, edition

One word summed up the disbelief the morning of Sept. 11: “Unthinkable.” It became The Tribune’s lead headline the next day.

“No one person came up with it,” said James E. Shelledy, The Tribune’s editor at the time (and a current member of its board of directors). The desk editor in charge of the front page settled on the word around 10 p.m., he said.

There was heated discussion about which photo to lead with. Ultimately, Shelledy said, editors reasoned that the photo of people running “had as much urgency and shock” as images of the planes hitting the towers, which had been seen on TV all day.

A photo of the second plane hitting the south tower ran lower on the page — “below the fold,” in newspaper talk.

Schools in Utah mostly stayed open that day, and many districts told staff to keep TVs and radios off.

One West High student said news got around anyway:

“People were saying they were so scared and no one could pay attention in class,” the student told The Tribune at the time. “The teacher had to try to calm people down.”

In Utah, one question after the shock of the attacks was how the newly declared “war on terrorism” would affect the planned 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, just five months away.

The head of the games’ organizing committee, Mitt Romney (later a U.S. senator and presidential candidate), said he met that day with the U.S. Secret Service, the agency in charge of a $200 million security program.

The Secret Service’s plan “did not have gaping holes or obvious weaknesses,” Romney said, but needed to be “completely reevaluated” after the attacks.

The Cathedral of the Madeleine opened its doors that night to people of all faiths, providing a place mourn the dead and pray for solace.

Monsignor Terrence Fitzgerald, the vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, told those gathered that “we join in prayer for our nation. We pray for a calm and compassionate response.”

At the Salt Lake Tabernacle, Gordon B. Hinckley, then-president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told those gathered that “we have been reminded that evil is still rampant in the world.” Church leaders vowed to send resources to any relief agency in need.

Masood Ul-Hasan, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake, said Salt Lake City police had offered to “keep an eye on the mosques.” He said members of Utah’s Muslim community “cannot do much but pray that God will bless the country. … It is terrifying for all of us in America. We are all one family.”

A Utah woman, Mary Alice Wahlstrom, 75, of Kaysville, and her daughter, Carolyn Beug, 48, of Los Angeles, were on board American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to strike the World Trade Center.

According to family, they were coming home from Boston after helping Beug’s 18-year-old twin granddaughters settle in at art school.

The Sept. 13, 2001, edition

A day after the attacks, news began to break about what happened on United Flight 93, the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

Family members of the flight’s passengers reported that they received calls from loved ones, who said they would fight to regain control of the plane, thwarting the hijackers’ attempt to hit a target in D.C. (What happened on the flight was dramatized in the 2006 movie “United 93.”)

Air traffic was grounded nationwide for a second day, and the director of the Salt Lake City International Airport said security changes were coming: No one but ticketed passengers would be allowed past the security gates, and no pocket knives would be allowed past the magnetometers.

Many of the rules established then remain in effect today, though last week, on Sept. 2, Salt Lake City International Airport became one of 14 U.S. airports chosen for the Transportation Security Administration’s new “Gateside by TSA PreCheck” program, which now allows eligible nontravelers to go beyond the security checkpoint.

Donations large and small came in to help people affected by the terror attacks. The Latter-day Saint church donated $160,000 to the American Red Cross; at a bagel joint next to The Tribune’s offices, at least $100 had been collected in a tip jar, also for the Red Cross.

Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County first responders were also preparing to go to New York to help with rescue efforts.

The Sept. 14, 2001, edition

Nationally, the worry was that some of the terrorists who allegedly plotted the attacks were still at large.

Meanwhile, flights began arriving again in Salt Lake City — a trickle that Thursday, before air traffic was expected to return to normal on Friday.

Also on Friday, churches across Utah heeded then-President George W. Bush’s call for services on Friday to mourn those killed in the attacks.

Two indications of how Utahns’ mindsets changed, 48 hours after the attacks:

• A bomb threat at the Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City led to the evacuation of hundreds of people downtown Thursday, a sign of heightened concern.

• Stores across Utah suddenly started selling out of American flags.

Utah college football teams — the University of Utah, Brigham Young University, Utah State, Weber State and Southern Utah — all followed their conferences’ decision not to play their scheduled Saturday games that weekend.

“It makes sense for everyone to stop,” said Kermit Hall, then-president of Utah State.

Tribune sports columnist Dick Rosetta applauded the schools’ decisions. “There are far larger issues in these tenuous hours than touchdowns, home runs and point spreads,” Rosetta wrote.

The Sept. 15, 2001, edition

The Tribune featured a photo of Bush touring the wreckage at ground zero. The newspaper also ran an FBI list of the 19 hijackers believed to be on the four planes used in the attacks.

In Utah, retired judge Raymond Uno — who spent part of World War II in an internment camp for Japanese Americans in Wyoming — told a Tribune reporter that he feared history was repeating itself.

“What’s happening to Muslims now are about the same things that were happening to the Japanese after Pearl Harbor,” Uno said.

Prep football games largely continued as usual in Utah on the Friday after 9/11, and tributes and moments of silence were held at most games.

In Taylorsville, a chain of players for Taylorsville and Hunter high schools walked past a color guard, each player holding the hands of an opponent, before the game.