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#732 | Wednesday, February 6th 2002
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Ironically, on September 10 I had been looking up airfares to Scotland because I planned- and still plan to- visit there this coming summer. There is an email that says the price of an airfare, which I sent at 1 a.m., Sept. 11.
I went to bed and got up for my Modern Social Problems class here at Georgetown College in Kentucky. It was 8:45, and normally my roommate would have had the television on. But of all days that week, she did not have it on. I also did not check my email that morning, which I normally do.
Outside I noticed how perfectly blue the sky was, and I thought it would be a great September day. When I got to my 9:30 class, the professor entered and immediately said, "I'm sure you all have heard about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center." We all looked at him in astonishment. He said that he didn't know a lot of details, but it looked like a terrorist attack, and that if we found bin Laden was behind it, America would seek justice.
All of the classrooms are supposed to have televisions, but ours did not. We went ahead with class as normal and got out at 10:45. On the way out several people told us that we were having a campus wide meeting upstairs from where my classroom was located, and also that classes were cancelled for the rest of the day.
Before I went there, I went across the hall and called my mom, who lives about an hour away from me. She told me that the towers had collapsed, and that a plane crashed into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. "It looks like an all-out terrorist attack!" she said.
At the campus wide meeting, we listened to updated news and prayed for our nation. A newscaster from the nearby city of Lexington was there anyway to give a talk on women in the media industry, but, of course, that is not what she talked about. There was a question and answer session afterward. I remember how one of our college's main administrators talked about how he hoped we would not lash out at Arab-Americans. It was especially moving because he is Lebanese-American. I also remember students and faculty alike asking questions about war, martial law, the draft (two male students asked about it), casualities, culprits, etc.
We adjourned and I went to lunch. My friends and I said we didn't feel like eating, but we knew we had to. I remember a student in front of me on her cell phone who was trying to get in touch with her family and was sobbing. I also remember how a big-screen television was brought into the cafeteria and everyone was watching it. The TV stayed there until January. I went back to my room and watched TV. I didn't call my family much because the local news said to stay off the phone lines.
We met as a campus again at that afternoon for more prayer and discussion. Then, I went to a campus prayer vigil at 6 and one at my church at 7. I don't think I slept well that night. The next week it was hard to concentrate on my school work because I was always looking at the news on television and on the internet.
My heart went out, and it still does, for those who lost loved ones in this tragedy. Luckily, my family does not know anyone who lost their lives that day. We do know someone who was abiout a mile away from the Towers, and we do know a woman whose son escaped from the WTC.
We have a new tradition of painting white benches in front of each of our dorms on campus. Soon after the attacks, we painted those benches with a patriotic theme. In front of my dorm, we have a bench with the NYPD logo on it. Others painted flags, and one painted the New York skyline with the words to a Christian praise chorus-"The day is dawning and I am just rising/I pray my hope won't fail, my hope."
The date of 9/11 touched all American lives and calls all of us to not take anything for granted.
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Marie | 21 | Kentucky
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#567 | Sunday, December 23rd 2001
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working at a construction site, sometimes you don't hear the daily news until the end of the day. That day, my wife, who works in television, called me and told me that a plane had crashed into the first tower. She was watching live television and giving me the details when the second plane crashed (on live television). I immediately knew we were being attacked. The question in my mind though was it terrorism or the beginning of World War III. I still don't know the answer to that question, but I hope it was a senseless act of terrorism and the guilty will pay. For the rest of the day we worked along side of the radio that was blaring out of a work vehicle, and it was one of the longest days ever. We all just wanted to get home to our loved ones. That day will always be etched in my mind, not as the day America was attacked, but when America had a major wake-up call that we are not untouchable and that freedom will not be easy.
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Aaron | 27 | Kentucky
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#369 | Saturday, December 8th 2001
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I was in the hospital on a gurney with an IV in my arm. A better question is "Where was my doctor?" He disappeared, I suppose to watch television accounts of the disaster.
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C. | 71 | Kentucky
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#324 | Saturday, December 8th 2001
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I was attending an EAL ("Everybody's a Leader") meeting at work. I'm a social worker for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Someone came in and announced that the WTC had been hit by an airplane. After pursuading the meeting leader to plug in a TV and switch to a news channel, we witnessed planes flying into the WTC. At first I thought the planes were foreign military aircraft and we were under attack. After a few moments I realized there were domestic commercial airplanes. But, unfortunately, we were still under attack. We were all in shock.
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William | 53 | Kentucky
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#224 | Sunday, October 28th 2001
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I was asleep. My grandmother called me and woke me from a dream I was having about a war. I was dreaming that New York was being bombed and on fire, she woke me to tell me that New York, was indeed, attacked. It broke my heart and scared me. I ran up to her house in time to see the second plane crash into the second building live on TV. I was amazed, frustrated, frightened.
Then the buildings fell. With those buildings, went my heart.
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Kalen | 17 | Kentucky
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