I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news that fateful day. It was third period during the first semester of my sophomore year at Wilton High School and I was in health class when the principal made an announcement across the school’s intercom: “Attention please,” said Principal Deborah Low. ”We are just receiving word that a small plane has hit the World Trade Center.” I remember looking at my friend Justin and saying, “Is this some sort of a joke? What kind of an idiot would accidentally fly his plane into one of the Twin Towers?”
As the bell rang for the next period, I soon found out that this was no joke. In fact, Wilton, a small town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, about 60 minutes northeast of Manhattan, is home to fathers and mothers who commute to New York City everyday, some of whom worked in and around the site of the World Trade Center. Principal Lowe may have said to the students of Wilton High, “If you have family members that work in and around the Twin Towers, please report to the main office.” If she did, I can’t quite remember because word began to spread around the hallways of WHS that this was not an accident: This was an act of terrorism of a magnitude none of us could fully understand at the moment.
I remember going to my next class, fourth period, which was the lunch period at Wilton High School. At that time, I had English class with Mr. Walsh, one of my favorite professors in high school. I sat next to a girl, Stephanie Davies, with whom we conversed about the potential magnitude of what was going on around the country. I could tell that Steph, who was a senior at the time and whom I looked up to as a young sophomore, was equally as stunned and saddened by the news as anyone else in the class. At that point, word was going around throughout the high school that one of the Twin Towers had collapsed.
“Collapsed? I asked Steph. ”There is no way one of those buildings could collapse,” I exclaimed. At that point, Principal Lowe came back on the intercom to tell us there would be “live coverage” of the events in the school’s auditorium and that we would be having “early dismissal” at around 12:30 p.m. Like everyone, I was still in shock. It wasn’t until I was driving home with my mom, who picked both my brother and I up from school, that I fully realized the magnitude of what had happened. Also, the fact that we were so close to the site of the attack and that some of my classmates had loved ones that worked down there, made everything seem all the more surreal.
As I look back today on the events of September 11th, 2001, it seems such a distant memory, but still very near and dear to the hearts and minds of the people of New York City, Washington D.C., and the entire country. I still think about what it would have been like to be a fireman, a police officer, an employee of a company in one of the buildings. I think about how catastrophic the damage was and how a city like New York, with such pride and resilience, was not going to let this attack stop the way it carried on and perservered. Lastly, I think about the family members who lost loved ones that day and the photographs of the “missing” that were put up all around Lower Manhattan and the entire city of New York.
Eight years later, September 11th is still with us: We must continue to rebuild and recover, but like the slogan of the firefighters of New York and the FDNY, we must also “Never Forget.”
