9/11/2001 - A Remembrance and a Sharing

Whether it was the assassination of JFK or the explosion of the Challenger, there are those experiences in your life that become indelibly etched into your memory. Even more than weddings, birthdays, graduations etc. these life altering, shared, catastrophic experiences stay in your memory, your psyche for your entire life. You remember every detail, every emotion, where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. When a catastrophic event happens, your experiences surrounding the event will always stay in your mind. Even after 45 years, I could tell you, in detail, my experience as a 13-year-old living through the assassination of a president. Those who have had the events on 9/11/2001 be their first experience with a shared, catastrophic event, will realize in their future, just how long the memory will last… forever.
We will always remember that day.
In the sharing of our mutual experiences on that fateful day, we can, along with the experience, share our fear, pain, anger, frustration and profound sadness. In so doing, find that the memories of that day can become a little more bearable.
On that note, I would like to share with you, my experience of 7 years ago, today.

It was a perfect morning; the sky was a beautiful pale blue without a single cloud, the temperature was in the mid to upper 70’s and there was a comfortable breeze.
My day started like any other and ended with the death of the innocence of the American people.
As I drove to my school on Foothill Rd. in Bridgewater NJ, I may have been driving a little fast when I saw the lights in my rearview mirror. The officer was a graduate of the Voc-Tech and let me go with a smile and a suggestion to slow down.
I entered my shop and turned on the equipment and the lights. My shop was the Supermarket Careers Program at Somerset County Vocational Technical High School, where I taught special needs High School students, supermarket skills. Tuesday was the day for our Herr’s Potato Chip delivery and Eddie our driver was right on time, but he wasn’t smiling.
“Did you hear the news? A plane hit the World Trade Towers!” he said as we went into my office. I turned on the radio and my jaw dropped when I heard the first reports of what had happened.
The fear was in the voice of the DJ, but he was in control. “I thought it was a small plane, but I am seeing it on CNN now, it was a commercial plane a big one! Oh MY God! Another plane just hit the other tower! … my God”
I went numb.
I decided to take my students to the library as the announcement came through the PA system into the room. “Please stay in your classrooms we will have information soon.” “Let’s go to the library,” a student said, “there’s a TV there”. I decided to ignore the announcement to stay in class even before my students asked me to leave. In the library, many teachers and students stood, sat on chairs and the floor around the TV. CNN was on and the videos of the explosion in the first tower and the second plane hitting the second tower were playing repeatedly. Then a live, shaky picture showed the first tower collapsing.
Silence… mouths agape and everyone gasped.
I was in shock and distracted by the events that were unfolding and to my responsibility to my students. Seeing the first tower fall made me realize that I had at least four family members working in the shadow of the World Trade Center. True panic seized me. I took out my cell and frantically started calling family members but the lines were all busy. The family members I was able to reach had no news.
The last bell rang and the busses took the students home, the faculty and staff said their good-byes and I slowly walked through the parking lot to my car. I thought that although I had walked to my car the same way for the past eleven years, this walk was very, very different. The school is located under the flight plans for Newark Airport and there are always planes flying overhead. The plane-less sky would greet me for the next few mornings and was an eerie feeling foreboding of the many more changes that were to come.
Driving home, I noticed how light the traffic was and quickly noticed the first American flag on a home next to the school, then another and another. I didn’t know where they had all been stored, but it seemed that every house was proudly flying the red, white and blue. It filled me with a powerful connection with every other driver on the road, every pedestrian, every other American. Yes, they were able to hit us hard. They hurt and killed us, but the sight of all the flags gave me a feeling of closeness, connection and a communion with every other American I passed. We were in this together.
I turned unto the street where I live and my neighbors were out waving flags and screaming at passing cars. It was a surreal feeling, no traffic, no planes in the sky, no one on the roads, until I turned the corner and it would seem that my neighbors had gone completely insane. But these were insane times; I parked my car and went into my home hugged my wife a little longer than usual, called my kids just to hear their voices and let them hear mine and tried to find out if my family working at ground zero were… alive.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I couldn’t eat, I just wanted to go to sleep to wake up and realize that it had only been a nightmare but I couldn’t sleep either. Lying in bed till 3:00 am watching the news, seeing the planes repeatedly hitting the towers, seeing the towers repeatedly collapsing, I could not stop nor did I try to stop the tears and finally, I slept.
The next day at school, the fear continued. The Principal asked me to order an emergency delivery of food that could be stored at the school to feed students and faculty for at least a week. Plans were made to be able to quickly move all students and staff into the gym, where there was plastic and duct tape to seal us inside in the event of chemical or nuclear attack. The food in the supermarket and additional supplies, delivered over the next weeks was stored in the school. The plan was that in the event of another terrorist attack, we (students, staff and faculty) would use the plastic and duct tape to seal ourselves into the gym, where we could survive on the stored water, cup-o-noodles and potato chips. The plan was that we would stay, all together in the gym for the duration. Thank God, it had not become necessary to determine if plastic sheets and duct tape could have saved our lives.
Over the next few months, fears subsided and so too did our pride and connectedness.
That Thanksgiving, our family got together for that most traditional of American holidays. For the prior twelve years, I had made a speech before we all ate our meal. My speeches were always filled with humor, inside family jokes and more importantly, the things we should be thankful for over the past year. As tradition had it, I was prepared with a speech on this less than traditional Thanksgiving… this Thanksgiving was very different. My speech that day was considerably shorter than usual. It started; “I’d like to thank God for allowing ALL our family to be here” and I named those family members whom, we were all so concerned about and who were now sitting around the table. “This Thanksgiving” I continued, “we can be so thankful that all of our loved one are here and healthy. But, I would ask for a moment of silence for the over two thousand families whose Thanksgiving was so cruelly taken away.” We ate our food and dried our tears.

9/11/2001; 7 years and a lifetime ago
I believe there is something cathartic in the telling and sharing of this experience. The fact that others feel the way you do and have similar experiences can lessen your fear and anger. I would love to hear from you and be able to post your experiences in the comments section.
Thank you.