This article was originally written on 7/14/14 with a few edits made recently.
My recollection of the events leading up to, during, and after September 11, 2001.
I’m writing this recollection of my memories over a decade after the event. Couldn’t sleep last night, and came across an AskReddit post asking where you were on 9/11, what were your reactions, etc.
Graduating college May of this year, I remember my roommate Luke talking about how we see the past in a “tint” or a “hue”, so to speak. I love, and still love to play 90’s music every now and then on Pandora or iTunes Radio and this statement seemed to hold true. The 90’s were always viewed to be a happy time for people. I was a kid and growing up in the small town of Mountain View and moving in 2000 to Saint Louis, Missouri I was spending my time playing and growing up, not having a care in the world. We even visited the World Trade Center during the summer of 2000.
The events of 9/11 and after changed all of that. For many, including myself, the events of 9/11 ushered in the Postmodern era, where sometimes one doesn’t have all of the answers to why things happen.
Fast forward to my personal experience of 9/11. I was sitting in Mrs. Logan’s (who passed sometime in mid-late 00’s, she was a great teacher) 5th grade classroom at Spoede Elementary School. Her classroom was arranged where there were multiple groups of four desks facing each other together. I can’t remember what we were working on, but one of the other teachers told Mrs. Logan that there was an incident at the World Trade Center and to turn on the T.V. The T.V. was located in the corner of the classroom and was switched on to CNN. We watched the footage of the first WTC billowing smoke and flames for just a couple minutes. This must have been after the first plane hit. After a couple of minutes, the T.V. was switched off, and we were given sheets of lined yellow paper, and were told to write down our immediate reactions and feelings. I distinctly remember sketching a picture of a skyscraper with a jagged broken top and explaining in a paragraph or two what was happening on that sheet of yellow, lined paper.
I remember thinking that the incident was along the lines of a small private plane hitting the side of the building. Also, my thoughts turned to grandma (passed away April of 2013), our uncle Butch, cousins Kit and Kay, and auntie Tess lived in Long Island. I wondered if everyone was OK (They were, and were far from Ground Zero). Shortly after, we were informed that the towers fell, and our teacher wisely decided not to turn the T.V. back on after the brief time on. She also reassured us that we were safe and no evacuations or other discussions took place until my brother (in 2nd grade at the time) and I went home at the end of the day and waited to watch the evening news later that night. Pop would, and still does today, regularly watch NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams each night at 5:30 p.m. That’s where we got our first informed and organized recollection of the events of that day. Our relatives were called early that afternoon to make sure everyone was OK. We also had Dial-Up internet at the time and Pop logged into AOL to check the online news sites such as CNN.com.
Fast forward to the day after, Wednesday, Sept. 12th. My brother and I would regularly go to AWANA on Wednesdays which was basically a “Boy Scouts for Christian Youth,” that we went to at a nearby church to where we lived. All the kids were rowdy and eventually a couple of kids started chanting, “we will bomb Afghanistan!” a couple times until the leaders calmed them down. A very disturbing gesture now that I look back on it.
The small bouts of racism were evident for the next few months following the events. I didn’t see too many racial remarks afterwards, but I remember in middle school a couple of years after, our principal describing how anyone of color or wearing a Hijab or headscarf occasionally received threats.
Lastly, the stigma that aviation received afterwards is what mars me the most. I used to love playing around on Flight Simulator software (Flight Simulator 95) on our old Dell computer in my younger days. (I think this or the 98 version was the last to feature the stunt of flying in between the World Trade Towers upside down in a Cessna). Afterwards, the thought that the terrorists probably used a flight simulator to practice the runs would cross my mind now and then.
Overall, we live in a different era since 9/11. We revisited the site of the World Trade Center back in the summer of 2005. During that time there was not much to see but a gaping hole and construction where the towers once stood.
I close with an excerpt from famed author and cartoonist Art Spiegelman:
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