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#1173 | Wednesday, April 10th 2002
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My patriatism has changed so much since September 11th. I have found out that people can come together as a nation and help each other which makes me proud to be an American. I remember i was in school. I am a high school senior on the verge of graduating and i remember that i came out of 2nd period and went to 3rd period which is ROTC. My SNSI had the radio on and they were talking about the pentagon so i wasnt really concerned and then they turned on the tv at 9:30 and i could not believe my eyes at what i saw. it was the most horrifying thing i have every seen in my life. to see that someone would want to possible do something like that. I was absolutely terrified. I really didnt what i was thinking as i was watching. All i could say was "Oh my God..." I kept thinking about my mother and my family. Expecially my Aunt who works in NYC. I was so scared for her. After 7 months it all seems like a fresh cut to me. It hurts so bad to know that something like this could happen. To know that everything that we stand for has been tried and tested. I am deeply sadened by what has happened. After September 11th, I tried to do what i could to help out. I tried to give blood. I donated alot of stuff to Goodwill. And i also sold red, white, and blue ribbons in my school to go to WTC relief fund. I would like to think that i did my part in helping out. I just hope that our great nation will overcome this enemy of terrorism and let freedom prevale.
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Laura | 17 | North Carolina
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#1171 | Tuesday, April 9th 2002
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I was sitting in my Calculus class at my high school. It was 10:05am and I had just started to hear a few 'rumors' about what was going on. I heard that a plane flew into the Tower. I really didn't think much of it, the thought of terroism never entered my mind. Then at about 10:15, a teacher down the hall ran into the classroom and said that both towers were hit and that one was coming down/down. I was in disbelief. My calculus teacher knew that we were distracted and he allowed us to go into another classroom and to watch tv. As I walked into the classroom, I saw on the TV as the other plane was hitting (it was a replay of what happened earlier) and just gasped. Never in my life had I ever seen any destruction like this. I'm only 17 years old and wasn't old enough to know about the Persian Gulf War. I was obviously not alive for the attack on Pearl Harbor so I have never saw this kind of national devistation. Ever since then, I have been intregued with 9-11 and will never forget what happened.
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Heidi | 17 | Massachusetts
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#1150 | Tuesday, April 2nd 2002
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I was in homeroom, when the Principal came on saying that we should bear in mind the souls lost at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. They told all students who had parents working there to report to the library. Meanwhile, I asked my homeroom teacher, what happened, and he told me that two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The image I had in my head was one of two plane colliding in mid-air and falling into the buildings, but that didn't seem plausible. I then started to think about the people who crashed the planes. I thought it was some domestic anarchist society at first. We couldn't get any tv stations, because we're served by the NYC stations, which were off the air, and our school doesn't have cable. All we could get was the morning's edition of Channel One. Hilariously irrelevant, so sept. 10. I sat through the day, watching scrambled WCBS-TV, the only working station, with no audio. I had my CD player, and on the bus home, I was listening to WQXR, one of the few stations that weren't playing CNN feeds. They were playing a piece by Chopin, and when it was finished, the DJ announced the time and the week's forecast. It was unseasonably warm that week in New York, and she said, "Tommorrow is going to be a beautiful day." When I got home, I took my TV and watched the BBC on my small black and white TV in my bedroom. I'm a 17-year old young man, and still, listening to the description of Osama Bin Laden's terrorist cell that night, I couldn't sleep. I closed my door, my window. Still, I couldn't close my eyes without feeling insecure. It's hard for me still to realize that if I weren't alive that these attacks would still have happened. I know that sounds unusually arrogant, but it's true for some reason. Stay strong and pay close attention.
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Armand | 17 | New York
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#1136 | Saturday, March 30th 2002
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Of course, like everyone else, the morning of September 11, 2001 was completely normal. I got up and dragged myself to school. While I sat in my first period english class, I wrote a letter to my friend, including the date and time that I wrote it, as I often do.
I wrote that letter at the exact same time that the first plane hit the WTC. I never sent it.
At that point, I still didn't know that anything was wrong. I went to my second period Acting class. When the towers collapsed, I was performing a skit, "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" for a class of first graders.
Acting class got out and we went to lunch. I went through the line, got my food, and sat down at my lunch table. In a few minutes, my other friends had joined me. I noticed that my friend Rob had a radio that he was holding to his ear. We asked him why he had a radio.
"Man...the World Trade Center is gone, man...it's gone."
We didn't believe him. We literally laughed at him. The WTC couldn't be gone. It was impossible. But Rob kept listening to his little radio, and we started to wonder if he was telling the truth.
I searched out another friend, Bethany. When I found her, she was searching for a television. I helped her look, but we never found one.
After lunch, I went to Broadcasting class. I walked in the room to find the television on, showing the footage of the towers collapsing. My teacher didn't say a word. We just sat for an hour and a half and watched the news. The same thing happened in my last class of the day, AP Biology.
When school let out, I ran to my car. I wanted to go home, I wanted to call my mom and just hear her voice. On the drive home, there was nothing on the radio but news. It was an absolutely gorgeous day...it only added to the sense of surrealism. How could it be so gorgeous and beautiful when something so terrible had happened?
The rest of the night my family crowded around the television. I went to bed knowing that the world around us had changed. I went to bed grieved that so many were dead...that so many loved ones were gone. I went to bed grateful that everyone I cared about was fine.
For the first time in my life, I was simply grateful to be alive.
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Dana | 17 | Virginia
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#1129 | Thursday, March 28th 2002
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I'm 17, and go to a private high school in Alabama. I went to my second period class (8:50 AM) and was shocked to see another student, who was in his car for the past hour, slowly walk in. "The World Trade Centers have been hit by planes." The class stopped in silence. Without access to media, we were stuck guessing. Fighter jets? Twin-engine Cessna's on a suicide mission? Never would we have imagined what happened. I was the only student (among 40+ teachers) stuck in the teacher's workroom minutes later, listening in to the small radio, trying to find updates. What we heard was mind-blowing. Twin Towers - gone. Pentagon - damaged. Washington Monument - gone. Capitol - gone. White House - badly damaged. To this day, I still don't how those false reports leaked.
But the most vivid memory of 9-11 was later that day. I drove home listening to eerily patriotic music on most every FM station. I stopped my car, and looked up. Even though I'm over 1200 miles from NYC, there was a huge difference. People were crying in the streets, glued to the television.. and there were no airplanes flying. And then the song lyrics came, and it was scary.. "..The Lord is coming, coming to America. Can you feel the fire? Can you see the flames? It's coming to, coming to America again.." ®1997
Thanks for reading.
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Wryn | 17 | Alabama
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