I was 18-years-old. I had just moved 3 hours from home to Manhattan, KS, where I was starting my freshman year at K-State. Is there a more impressionable year of life than your freshman year of college? Not for me. And just when I thought I had experienced all the change in my life in the 3 weeks leading up to Tuesday, September 11, 2011 that I could handle, the entire world changed.
I wish that I had written down my thoughts and actions that historic and devastating day, but I didn't. So here goes, 10 years later to the day.
My first class on Tuesdays that semester was not until 9:30, so when the first tower had been hit, I was still sleeping in my dorm room. My friend Nicolette burst through the door and turned on the TV yelling that the World Trade Center had been hit. I remember being confused, not grasping what was happening. As I wiped the sleep from my eyes and took in the scene unfolding on the TV screen, I began to comprehend that there were probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people perishing inside that burning building. I wondered what could have caused it.
Only minutes passed when I watched on live TV as the second tower was struck. That is when I started to understand the magnitude of what was happening. I was in high school when the attack on the US embassy in Tanzania occurred. Tanzania seemed a world away, however. The prospect of an attack on American soil had not seemed like an imminent threat.
I, along with my friends, remained glued to the TV sets that morning. It seemed like a nightmare as the Pentagon was struck by the third plane, and finally, Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, PA. What would be next? The media began wondering if a city on the West Coast might be the next target. My brother was in downtown San Francisco for work meetings that week. San Francisco was frequently mentioned as a potential target.
I talked to my mom several times that day. She instructed me to go fill my car with gas, in case America's oil/energy supplies were attacked next. I waiting in a line about 15 cars long at the gas station at 17th Street and Anderson Avenue.
I was on edge the rest of the day, expecting to hear word that another target had been hit. Thankfully, that news never came.
By afternoon, information about the plan hijackers was bening revealed. I decided to go to my afternoon class, Women's Studies. Why I took this course is beyond me. I am not exactly the definition of feminist. My instructor was a liberal feminist, of course, who generally said little that I agreed with. That day was no exception. Had I not been a freshman, new to the college scene, I would have walked out of her class that day as she told us we needed to be tolerant and insinuated that the US might just deserve some of what it was getting. I was fuming by the end of the period and couldn't get out of the room fast enough.
I honestly don't remember much of the rest of the day. I think I spend the evening with my friends in the dorm trying to make sense of the day's events. The magnitude of the hijacked planes had not sunk in yet. The world we lived in would never be the same.
I always watch at least one 9/11 TV special every year at this time. It never fails that I tear up thinking about the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives that day, and the husbands, wives, children, siblings, and parents they left behind. The positive to come out of the attacks was the patriotism that we all discovered. Flags everywhere. Young people dedicating their lives to our military. I did not expect that unabashed patriotism to fade as quickly as it did.
Generations before mine remember everything about the day Kennedy was assassinated, or the day that the Challenger space shuttle exploded (I was only 3-years-old). I realized this week that many of today's high school kids don't remember 9/11. We need to remember, and we need to explain everything to future generations.
In the days that followed 9/11, there seemed to be only a question of when another major attack would happen, not if. But America fought back, and unbelievably, 10 years later, there hasn't been another attack, and life is unbelievably normal. I am proud to be an American, and eternally grateful to the men and women in uniform that keep us safe.
God Bless America.
No comments:
Post a Comment