On September 11

On September 11, 2001 I was in the library. My senior government class had taken a test the previous day and I had missed it. My teacher sent me there while they went over the test in class. While sitting alone at the large round table studying for the make up the librarian turned on the television. I, of course, immediately took my head out of the book and looked up. What I saw I will never forget. CNN was on and the second plane just flew into the second tower. Live video of smoke, fire, and debris filled the screen. I had no idea what was going on.

A plane crashed in New York. Two planes had crashed in New York. It was impossible. At that point nobody knew what was happening. All I imagined was a tragic accident. I was young. I was naive. I was a senior in high school. I was speechless. When I was brought back into the class I quietly sat down, opened my books and continued with the lesson being taught. My initial thought was to turn on the television in the classroom and let the teacher and class see what I had just seen. I decided not to and just sat down.

After a few minutes of lesson the principal came over the loud speaker and announced what had happened. A terrorist attack in New York. The two planes had been hijacked. On top of that, two additional planes had been hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon and an open field in Pennsylvania. The entire class was speechless. Our normally outspoken teacher was speechless. The remainder of the day at school was spent watching television and seeing the events unfold before our eyes.

All of the classes for the day were cancelled. Well, they weren’t cancelled but they didn’t go on as usual. There was very little discussion about what had happened. Nobody really spoke about what was going on. We let the anchors do it for us. Four planes had gone down. All by external means. All by terrorists. All as an attack on us.

I got out of school early each day to go to work. On this day as I went to work I listened to the radio and heard a lot of the same information I had previously. I didn’t care. I needed to hear more of it. With every fiber of my being I needed to hear it. I listened in hopes of hearing something new. I was hoping to hear good news. Hoping to hear everything was going to be alright. I didn’t.

When I arrived at work it was more of the same. At the animal hospital where I worked it seemed to be business as usual; but it wasn’t. Between checkups and appointments and doing my job, I sat on a round stool in front of the microscope next to a small portable radio. It was on the same station playing in my car. Nothing new was being reported. It was still a terrorist attack. There were still thousands of people dead. There were still fears of more to come.

It seemed the number of reported deaths would never cease. Estimates were already in the thousands. Numbers could reach up to ten, twenty thousand. New York City, Washington DC, Somerset County Pennsylvania. It is the heart of the largest and most densely populated city in the country where millions of people live and work. It happened in the heart of our military and on a plane with normal people who were on their way home, or to work, or on vacation. Who knows how many casualties there would be? It seemed infinite.

On my way home there was more listening to the radio. There was a little bit of new information but for the most part it was the same. Both buildings had long since collapsed and the fires at the Pentagon had long since been extinguished. All the passengers of Flight 93 were still deceased and the count of the total casualties was still rising.

I walked in the house and quietly went to my room and changed. Went downstairs, sat on the couch and waited for dinner. My dad asked me if everything was ok and if I had anything to say. I didn’t. I was still taking it all in. The entire family was there for dinner, but instead of watching “Wheel of Fortune” or “Jeopardy” we watched the news. What else was there to watch? Nothing else really mattered anymore.

My Uncle, who is a doctor in New Jersey, kissed my aunt and his daughters and drove into New York. He wanted to help. He needed to help. There were countless others who did the same. The greater need at this point was helping those who needed it the most. They were selfless individuals who, on this night, put the greater good above that of their own and their family. It was the best news I had heard all day.

In that dire time of need these individuals were fearless. They did not know what was going to come next. There could have been another attack while they helping and they would become another casualty. That didn’t matter. They knew they were needed and what they had to do. Firefighters, police officers, medics, and armed forces reservists were all called in to work overtime. Though they knew when the signed up for their jobs they were putting their life in danger on a regular basis it was never as apparent on that day. They were running into the smoke. They were running into the falling metal. They were running into the debris. A lot of them didn’t have masks or protection. They had on what they wear every day, some less. They had a job to do.

The following day at school classmates, teachers, and administrators began to talk again. Not whispers like the previous day, but actual talking about what had happened. We had an understanding of what had occurred. After the President’s speech from the night before we knew. We were attacked, but the question still remained as to why.

Days past before I started to gain any semblance of what had happened. I was confused. I was upset. I was angry. I was in mourning. The country was in mourning. Husbands had lost wives. Mothers and fathers had lost sons and daughters. We had all lost someone, whether we knew them or not.

My family’s American flag was put out. Normally reserved for holidays it was raised with a sense of pride and strength. All of the neighbor’s flags were out as well. Our normally quiet twenty-two house neighborhood was screaming. Turning onto the street the voices were immediately heard. We will not falter. We will not hide. We will not be scared. We will not allow something like this to bring us down. And we didn’t.

Eventually life resumed as we know it. The news started reporting on local stories and I was able to watch baseball. Lessons in school were made up and I took that test. Though I knew something had drastically changed in my life and the lives of everyone in the country, I was happy to get back to normal. There was, and since has been, the underlying fear of another attack; but I cannot allow that to take over my life. I was young then and I knew life needed to be lived.

Ten years have passed. Each one of us is ten years older. We know more now than we ever wanted to. For the majority of us our eyes are open to a world we could have never imagined. In the ten years since that day I have grown up. I have become an adult, not only because of age, but a little because of what had happened that day. It was an instant realization of the complexity of the world. There was more going on around me than I could have ever imagined.

As with any major event we will always know where we were. My dad was in class in grade school on November 22, 1963 when the Principal interrupted class crying. My family was in Florida ready to travel home on January 28, 1986. On September 11, 2001 I was in the library studying for a test. We will always remember. It is our responsibility to remember.