I was sitting in Craig Hall at Rhode Island College waiting for my Educational Psychology class to begin. I really hated this class; the professor was boring and was very difficult to understand as she was from Germany and the last thing I wanted to do was spend a warm, beautiful September morning stuck in this class.
I was looking out the window when another student came in and said, “They hit the Twin Towers!” I didn’t know who “they” were and no one knew how bad this “accident” really was. That’s what the news was calling it, an accident. As the day progressed it became painfully clear that this was no accident.
I drove home, walked in the living room and saw my mother glued to the television. We watched the coverage of United 175 hit the South Tower as the fire was raging in the North Tower from American 11. As the day progressed we would learn that a total of four planes were hijacked… American 77 would hit the Pentagon and United 93 would go down in a field in Pennsylvania.
The days that followed were filled with fear, uncertainty, and helplessness. At the time, I was working at Cardi’s Furniture and the owners of the store donated two tractor trailers for people to fill with supplies of food and water for all the people working at what was being called “Ground Zero.” I volunteered, along with dozens of other Cardi’s employees to fill those trucks as hundreds of people showed up with canned goods, water, medical supplies, and whatever else they thought the police, firemen, and paramedics could use in New York City.
Once I began teaching at Pilgrim, I started to organize a trip each spring to New York during which we would visit Ground Zero. We have seen the site transformed from a mess of rubble to a construction site to a now living memorial to the victims of the attacks.
This is my 9/11 story… like many Americans I can remember each and every thing I did that day… please feel free to post your own 9/11 memories here. And whether or not you decide to post, please follow the link at the bottom of this Blog to TIME magazine’s website “Portraits of Resilience”, which is a collection of stories from 9/11 survivors, family members of victims, soldiers who fought in the resulting wars, Iraqi civilians, and our political leaders.
http://www.time.com/time/beyond911/#