Given the context of our relatively short lives on this beautiful world we live on, it’s hard to think of a lot occurring within our lifetimes as being truly historic.
It has been said that each generation has a defining historical event occurring during their prime developmental years. Think about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the entirety of the Vietnam War. For people my age, that event will most likely be the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
I’ve heard people tell me they will always remember where they were when they found out Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. I can relate, because I watched everything unfold in real time on nearly the opposite side of the country.
I was a senior at Rock Springs High School when it happened. I got off the bus, wearing my heavy backpack slung over my right shoulder, immediately making my way to Gigi Jasper’s classroom for my first hour mythology class. Walking into her room, I found her reading a website article about a plane crash in New York. She told me a jet had crashed in New York, but people were still trying to piece together what happened. A few minutes later, class started and carried on like normal. By the end of the class on during the short walk to Andy Hall’s physics class, something felt off.
Some of the open classrooms between Jasper’s room and Hall’s room were used by the school’s English teachers and walking by the open doors, I remember seeing many of the classrooms with televisions set in front of the desks. It’s one thing to see a TV in one room, but multiple rooms all turned on and showing the news was something else entirely. Once class started in Hall’s room, he announced to the class that the U.S. was under attack and the people behind it were hijacking airplanes and flying them into buildings. Class was effectively cancelled. Hall took us into the high school’s library where we sat and watched the broadcast of whatever latest developments the TV news anchors received.
The same was true for my French 4 class after that, though we sat in in her room watching the television. To Vicki Vincent’s credit, she spent some time talking with us about how the event impacts the rest of the world. For a class that I ultimately remember for introducing me to French-dubbed Disney movies and awkward soirées where students spoke French and ate typical French foods, it was a real moment in a class that I only took because I had taken the previous three French classes and I had a crush on one of the other students in the class. I just wish I remember exactly what Vincent said.
What I won’t forget from the whole morning is video played and replayed taken during and after the attacks. I’ll never forget the image of the jet striking the second tower, or the monstrous cloud of thick dust and smoke as it swallowed up people running from the towers. I won’t forget the video from a helicopter flying above the Pentagon, surveying the damage the building sustained. Those videos played over and over during those few hours.
On the grand scale of things, those terror attacks changed everything. The U.S. entered into two wars with nations and the effects of those wars likely still aren’t completely understood. One person I knew died during the conflict, while another was forever changed by his experiences. When we fly somewhere, we have to go through a TSA screening to ensure nothing dangerous is brought aboard the flight.
It’s an event that will be highlighted in history books long into the future. It’s also an event I’ll member exactly where I was when as it unfolded.
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