I was a senior in college, living in a small apartment near campus with three of my closest friends. It was a regular morning; I was getting ready to leave for my first class and we had The Today Show on in the background.
R: "Hey, looks like a plane hit one of the World Trade Center buildings."
Me: "Really? Oh wow...look at that. What a horrible accident."
As I watched fire consume the top of one tower, as I listened to Matt Lauer narrate the scene on TV in front of me...the second plane hit.
This was not a horrible accident.
Not knowing what to do, I did what I had been doing for the past three years - I went on my way to class. As I rode the bus to campus - and the memory of this moment is somewhat of a blur - I wondered what the hec was going on. To be honest, I don't remember if others sitting on the bus around me were talking about what had just happened. I don't really remember the walk to the journalism school to attend my censorship class. What I do remember is opening the doors to the lobby of the J school and seeing a huge crowd of students standing in front of the four television screens that formed a giant square in the middle of the lobby. On one screen, the Twin Towers, burning. On another the Pentagon, on fire. Another was a news reporter frantically reporting every update that came in, and the other screen another news reporter reporting just as frantically.
As I looked around me, I was stunned. People were crying. As I turned back to the screens, I couldn't help but wonder what I would see next. The arch in St. Louis in ruins? The Space Needle in Seattle on fire? The Statue of Liberty smoking? What was next? What could possibly be next?
I made my way to class, which was only half full. Our professor briefly mentioned what was going on and then cancelled the rest of class.
What to do now?
I headed back home. Again, the events of the day are blurry. But I remembered that it was one of my roommate's birthday...A's 21st...and had planned to go to Franklin Street to a few bars that night. Those plans were scrapped. I think we just went to dinner as a group, a local place...I don't even remember where. We prayed. We prayed for our country, those lost, those missing, our President, our government, our American citizens, ourselves. We prayed for understanding. Why did this happen? What did it mean? How could someone do this?
It was an event that even to this day I don't fully understand. How people can be so heartless, so cruel, so calculating, filled with so much hatred for America. How someone can get on a plane, knowing they would die, and that they would kill others, and bring with it so much despair to our country. Who becomes that person?
That night, we ventured to the Student Union to watch the President address the nation. We sat in silence as our President spoke about the events of the day. A grave sense of reality washed over me...today meant war. Today meant that tomorrow and the next day and the day after that would never be the same. We were changed. We were all changed. And now seven years later, we are still changed.
They say we live in a "post 9/11 world." We do. We always will. And while I hope the events of September 11, 2001 will never happen again, I hope that we will always remember the events of the day, and that we never forget the 3,000 plus lives that were lost that terrible day. Thousands of families were broken that day, and they are rebuilding their lives. But they are changed forever.
Just as we all are.
4 comments:
What a horrible, tragic day. I will never forget it--my entire family was affected. At the time my uncle was working at the Pentagon and I remember frantically dialing my mother trying to find out if he was alive. It was the most agonizing 3 hours of my life as we waited to find out that he was fine.
Today at school I asked my students if they remembered it, and then the reality that many of them weren't even born at the time.
I was at work in my office. Tim was working from home. There was a voice message on my phone from Tim - "Peggy, turn on the TV!" We have a TV in our conference room and someone had already turned it on. We were all stunned as we watched TV most of the day. We are usually a talkative group but that day no one talked much - we were all in disbelief. Rumor had it that they might attack the big storage tanks in Greensboro. We were all scared.
Last night we watched a show about this - watched the videos again. Sometimes it is still hard to believe this horrible act happened.
We hope to visit the new Pentagon Memorial when we make a trip to the DC area in a few weeks.
Great post. I remember where I was, remember that all I wanted to do was see my kids and hug them for hours. I remember all of us at work standing around a TV with rabbit ears and aluminum foil to get a better reception. Tears...and the defening quiet as we all just stood there and listened to every word. I will never ever forget it. No one should.
I was at school with my class when a fellow teacher came in and told me about the planes hitting the towers. Then the fire alarms went off at school...it was a fire drill(very poor timing!)...I remember my heart starting to race when I heard those alarms and thinking "What is going on?" I was so scared for my kids.
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