CAZENOVIA, NY – Thomas Flynn, former CBS Evening News producer, will read from his acclaimed book-length poem “Bikeman,” an account of his experiences at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, at a special Cazenovia Forum event marking the 10th anniversary of the tragedy.
The event will take place on Sunday, September 11 at 7:30pm at the Presbyterian Church Meeting House on Albany Street in Cazenovia, immediately following the annual Community 9/11 Ceremony that will begin at 7:00pm across the street in Memorial Park. This Caz Forum event is free of charge and light refreshments will be served after the reading.
In 2001 Flynn was a producer for CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, living in lower Manhattan near the corner of 10th Street and Sixth Avenue. When the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, he grabbed a pen and notebook and rode his bike to the scene, arriving at about the time the second plane hit the South tower.
“Bikeman,” published in 2008, is Flynn’s account of his experiences in the midst of the disaster, including his struggle to both cover the story and survive it.
In his foreword to the book, Dan Rather wrote “what Tom has set down here are the reports of the journalist as poet, or poet as journalist. The two are not so far apart as some may think, nor are the experiences limned in our cultural touchstones so far removed from our contemporary headlines. These dispatches in verse tell the story of a journey into a modern underworld, and of the escape that made it possible to tell the tale. Here is a survivor’s lament, related by one who ‘did not live through it’ but ‘just did not die.’”
In addition to working for the CBS Evening News, Flynn was a founding member of 48 HOURS and a producer at 60 Minutes for Steve Kroft. He currently writes and produces for Dan Rather Reports on cable broadcaster HDNet.
He’s been honored by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with 15 Emmy Award nominations, winning six. And he was honored with the prestigious Peabody Award for his work on 48 HOURS.
