Twenty-three years ago, on September 11th, the terrorist organization al-Qaeda conducted the single deadliest terrorist attack in American history. From the Twin Towers to the Pentagon, death and destruction marked that tragic day, in which nearly 3,000 Americans lost their lives. However, over the years, the shock of it has worn off. The newer generations, having not experienced 9/11, treat it with much more levity than previous ones. 9/11, though recognized as a tragedy, is treated more like a joke. It has lost its meaning.
It is time we rethink the way we view and portray 9/11 and recapture the emotion of the moment. Below are 2 short stories from people who experienced this calamity, detailing where they were and their experience with 9/11.
Jill Pepe, 12th Grade Guidance Counselor of 17 years:
“On September 11th, I found out about the attacks from my television. They were broadcasting it on the news, all over. I was a junior in college at the time. I actually grew up on Long Island.
I remember I was watching reruns of my favorite TV show when the news was broadcast. They shut off all of the TV programs and redirected them to news networks. My general reaction to this event was fear and worry. I did have family who worked in New York City at the time. I had friends who had parents who lived there and worked there. My first reaction was to try and get news from my family. I tried to call home to make sure everybody was accounted for. However, unfortunately at the time, circuits were down for everything. Nothing would go through for telephone calls. It took a while before I could get an answer from anybody.
It was a scary time. My college shutdown classes, so everything was canceled for everybody. I did not go to school in New York City, but I went to school in New York. I think even the day after, things were closed down.”
Mr. Cox, Social Studies Department Chair, AP Government/Honors Economics Teacher of 22 years:
“So, this, for this generation, is like the Pearl Harbor attack for my dad’s generation. We will always remember where we were the moment we heard about the attack. At the time, I was teaching at a different school. I taught with the county. At that school, the practice was at the beginning of the year, teachers would bring their kids down to the media center to get their IDs and the like.
Another teacher passed me and asked ‘Have you heard? Have you heard?’ I said, ‘Have I heard what? What’s going on?’ This was the day before smartphones, we weren’t getting notifications, we just didn’t know. But word spread. She said ‘A plane has hit the World Trade Center.’ And my reaction was, I think I felt like what everybody else felt like. ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry to hear that.’ But, in my mind, it must have been a little plane crash caused by an accident or medical emergency. I never imagined it would be a planned terrorist attack. Until I get to the Media Center. So, there was a television they had on and it had a split screen. It showed the World Trade Center and then it showed the Pentagon. At that moment, I knew we were under attack.
It was just horrific. We were glued to this set. New York City was under attack and then Washington D.C., they hit the Pentagon, was under attack.
As soon as my kids were done, we went back to my classroom. I had a television in my class, we turned it on. The principal said to turn off our televisions. But I’m a history teacher, this was insane. I taught history for middle school, so this was not gonna happen. I called my parents, and I said, ‘Mom, Dad, you’ve gotta turn on the television. We’re under attack’. We continued to watch it unfold in my class, and then we saw in real time the second plane hit. We then saw the World Trade Center collapse. I knew tens of thousands of people worked in the World Trade Center. So, in my mind, we just lost as many people as the entire Vietnam War. I guessed we lost about 50,000, 40,000. As it happened, a lot of those people got out, thank god. So, we lost 3,000 instead.
But, we also saw the people jumping out of the buildings before they collapsed. The fire was spreading and it was just engulfed, burning at thousands of degrees Fahrenheit because of the jet fuel. So, you just saw the bodies falling out and hitting the ground. As the day went on, parents came to pick up their kids. By the end of the day, it was a ghost town. There were no kids in school. And I understand it. There was no chance Pembroke Pines was going to be attacked, but we didn’t know how big this was gonna get. Was this just the opening salvo of a much wider war. For the first time since the War of 1812, the American homeland was attacked.
I remember that night, my wife went over to my parents’ house and something just struck me. They didn’t live too far from the airport. A lot of planes were getting kinda low, ‘cause these were commercial planes. Usually, on any given night, you could see commercial aircraft flying overhead. But that night, all commercial travel was grounded. Any planes that had been coming from Europe across the Atlantic were either turned back to Europe or redirected to Canada. Anything coming to the Pacific would be directed to either Canada or Mexico. So, that night, only military aircraft were patrolling the skies of America. And you could hear these F-16s, F-18s, F-15s flying overhead.
We all realized the gravity of it. Thousands of Americans had just been killed by some foreign actor. There was no doubt it was not a measure of domestic terrorism. It was a foreign actor. It became clear it was going to be terrorists, as opposed to nation states like China or Russia. But, there was the same feeling, I think, that my parents’ generation experienced when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. I really pulled Americans together. We believed, we knew we were under attack. We had been attacked. America had been attacked. Not that group or this group. It was, we were all attacked. So, we all felt this indescribable sense of patriotism. And, for that period, for a few years, we were no longer this group or that group. We were all Americans. It didn’t matter the identity. What mattered was we were attacked and we were gonna respond. America is going to respond. So, there was a shortage of American flags because they were everywhere. Yards, cars, trucks, the like. There was just this overwhelming sense of ‘protect our house.’ I remember hearing that in newscasts and from political pundits that, and I knew at the time, America’s changed forever. It has not. In a few years, we were right back to division, and it got even worse. But, that was the overall feeling in America, that we will unite and we will confront this threat together.”
9/11 wasn’t just a tragic event, it moved and shaped the lives of millions of Americans and people across the world. It united both the United States and the world through tragedy. It showed both the brutality of al-Qaeda and the potential for world unity, kindness, and generosity. For the first time in history, the world came together in mourning, and for the 23rd year, it will once again gather in mourning and remembrance of the lives lost that dreadful day.
