This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of September 11th. Ten years have come and gone since that day when our world forever changed. I teach high school students, most of them were too young to remember what happened. They told stories of being told that a tower fell. They knew it was a bad thing but they couldn't really comprehend why. It is like my generation hearing about the assassination of our country's president, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Events we know to be world altering, but that do not feel real. This, however, was very real.
It was my senior year of high school. AP Calculus was first thing in the morning. I couldn't tell you what we were doing in class that day. We were meeting in a classroom that belonged to another teacher. She came in at some point that morning, which was very unusual, and apologized for interrupting but she said she had to turn on the tv. Something was wrong with the world trade center in New York. Before that day I don't know that I ever would have been able to identify exactly what was in those two towers in a city full of such large buildings.
We turned on the television and watched the news reports. At first we couldn't tell what was wrong, we could only see a lot of smoke coming from the building. It quickly became evident that a plane had crashed into the side of the building. Such a horrible accident, how did it happen, what went wrong with the plane? I remember thinking, how tragically sad this accident was for the people in the plane, and I remember worrying for the people in the building, but at this point I was moving on and thinking that I should really get focused the big chemistry test next period. That's when we saw the second plane. I admit that I thought for a moment how strange it was that two planes accidentally crashed into neighboring buildings... something must be very wrong with the computers in the planes. It slowly started to dawn on us that this had been done on purpose. That's when the fear kicked in. When the plane when into the pentagon, panic had taken the place of fear. What else would be hit today, what would happen tomorrow? What was going to happen to my dad? Were the people on base safe?
Shortly after this, the bell rang and we switched classes. How strange it was to be going through the normal motions of a school day. Shouldn't we be going home, locking ourselves up in a bunker or something? I'll never forget my chemistry teacher keeping her cool that morning. Most of us from calculus were headed right to chemistry, AP kids flock together, and we entered the room just going a mile a minute. Did you hear? What's going to happen? How could this be happening? She quieted us down, and calmly handed out our tests. She had to be kidding right? Surely we would turn on the tv and keep watching the news. She was not kidding, she told us that as soon as we change our plans and alter our lives in response to the terrorists, they win. They may knock us down, but they don't get to keep us there. So we took our tests and went on to our next classes... that is until the bomb threat.
I am pretty sure that there is a very special place set aside in hell for the person who called in the bomb threat that day. Bomb threats were not uncommon in my life, they happened multiple times in middle school, military schools being an obvious target overseas. I have never once been actually frightened of there being a bomb in my school, I always assumed that if you actually wanted to blow up the school you wouldn't warn anyone first. I was scared that day. They evacuated us to the soccer field, not a safe distance, and really open for flying shrapnel. We milled nervously around waiting for the all clear to go back inside, and a shout rings out across the field "I see an airplane." That kid has a spot in the special hell as well. I went straight home after school. My mom and I sat on the couch and watched the coverage of the events of the morning. When my brother came home and saw the tv, he asked us what movie we were watching. The middle school had not told the students anything. Routines went back to normal, but life was never the same again.
It was not a lot more than a year later when I sat in a room in the history building of Georgia Tech and heard that the war had officially begun. Of course for me the war began a long time before that, when we said goodbye to my dad and he headed to Iraq. It is hard to describe what it is like to have a parent off at war. I am so thankful to the community that I had built up around myself, and to my professors, for helping me at that time. I have never been great at dealing with my feelings, and I did a truly fantastic job that semester of running away from my fears but embracing them at the same time. I went a really long time skipping class and obsessively watching the news. Luckily for me, I never heard the names of people that I loved. There are so many people who were not so lucky.
I was sitting at CCF a few years later when I heard about the death of Laura. Laura and I were not close, I don't think you could call us friends. We went to high school together for one year. It was a very small school. Laura was a senior when I was a freshman. We were both on the Model UN team that went to the Hague that year. I stuck with my freshman friends, and annoyed her and her older friends. She loaned me her shoes one night though. They were cute and tall, I was clutzy and I broke them. She was so angry with me. I wrote her a letter apologizing about the shoes, she wrote me back telling me not to worry. In my letter I wished her luck at West Point, she would be attending there in the fall. Graduating just in time to serve in Afghanistan and get hit by an IED. I learned of her death from my friend DeSean. He had always wanted to fight in a war when we were growing up. He spoke of it often. We were able to meet up one spring in Tucson, TX. Sadly, he wasn't the same young man anymore. He had served in Afghanistan as well and seen up close and personal the effects of those deadly devices.
I ask you to take a look back this weekend as well. Remember where you were when you heard about the twin towers. Be thankful for the freedom that you have in your life. If you see a soldier, a police officer, or a firefighter stop them to say thank you for everything that they do and for the sacrifices they make. So many men and women have died since that day fighting to protect you and I. We are truly blessed to have the freedoms that we do, but freedom is definitely not free. It is paid for everyday by people in uniform, take a minute and say thanks, it may mean more to them than you will ever know.
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