story3407.xml
Title
story3407.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-09-11
911DA Story: Story
Tuesday was a beautiful morning. It was crisp and cool in my little orchard town in the Commonwealth. I was in second period gym class and we were playing field hockey on the upper field on our campus. I was the goalie for my team and suddenly I was stung by a yellow jacket. I rushed over to my teacher and told her that I had to go to the nurse, because I may have an allergic reaction to the sting. As I walked through the building, things were normal.
About five minutes after I entered the nurse's office, the familiar voice of my principal came over the loud-speaker. I couldn't really hear what he was saying because the nurse's intercom was broken. We, in the office thought it had something to do with an airplane and the WTC. Immediately my thoughts panned back to images of that small Cesna that crashed into the White House lawn. A friend and I walked to the main office to inquire what had happened and we were stunned to hear that two jetliners had crashed into each of the WTC towers. My heart sank and I felt very ill and cold.
My next class an English class which I shared with seven other seniors. My school building had just been built the last year and so some details had not been completed. One of those little details happened to be setting up the television network to the televisions that had been placed in every room. Needless to say, we had no means of watching the news coverage of the horrific event save a small five inch black and white tv which my teacher kept in her closet.
For the next hour my classmates and I sat, our eyes glued to the minute screen and tried to comprehend the smoke, fire, dust, and destruction. Administrators, students, and teachers learned about our tv and soon crowded around it with us. We learned about the Pentagon and about a possible fourth hijack and were horrified as we found that Flight 93 had crashed in our own state.
I'll never forget how each one of us in that small classroom had a name of someone they knew that worked in the WTC district or Pentagon, or just friends who lived in Manhattan. We watched as reports of possible car bombs outside the State Department drove our student teacher into a frenzy of panic. Her boyfriend was an intern for the Department of State.
It was the sense of not knowing that made the moment horrific. So many questions arose. "Who were the culprits?" "How many were dead?" "Where was the President?" "Were there other targets?" "Who is Osama bin Laden?" (For some, his name meant nothing on September 10, but would soon become common in the English vocabulary.) "Are we safe here?" And the most frightening question, the one that no one could answer: "What happens now?"
I remember dashing out emails for my classmates and anyone else who wanted to know the whereabouts of their family and friends. The school's network was flooded and it was very difficult to send messages and move from page to page, but I became the designated news director and kept tabs on about five different webpages. I can still recall the lump in my throat and the diminishing contents of the tissue box sitting nearby.
I spent my time while waiting for pages to download by watching the terrifying televised scenes. Before that morning they had only been common to memories of Pearl Harbor and movies like Independence Day.
As tears clouded my vision and sobs shook my body, I thought of how much I loved this country. How much I respected the men and women who would fight for it. I thought of the brave souls who ran into the burning hell that terrorists had made for us. I thought about a thousand things in that hour. And I knew in that single moment as Tower One fell in slow motion to her iminent death that I would never love this nation any less than I did in that instant.
A team is as strong as its weakest player, and on the morning of September Eleventh, members of the American team became equal and strong and resolute. We will never weaken despite many things that make us doubt our country and our government, ourselves and each other. We are all that each other has, and on a beatiful morning in September, we came to realize just how much really have.
About five minutes after I entered the nurse's office, the familiar voice of my principal came over the loud-speaker. I couldn't really hear what he was saying because the nurse's intercom was broken. We, in the office thought it had something to do with an airplane and the WTC. Immediately my thoughts panned back to images of that small Cesna that crashed into the White House lawn. A friend and I walked to the main office to inquire what had happened and we were stunned to hear that two jetliners had crashed into each of the WTC towers. My heart sank and I felt very ill and cold.
My next class an English class which I shared with seven other seniors. My school building had just been built the last year and so some details had not been completed. One of those little details happened to be setting up the television network to the televisions that had been placed in every room. Needless to say, we had no means of watching the news coverage of the horrific event save a small five inch black and white tv which my teacher kept in her closet.
For the next hour my classmates and I sat, our eyes glued to the minute screen and tried to comprehend the smoke, fire, dust, and destruction. Administrators, students, and teachers learned about our tv and soon crowded around it with us. We learned about the Pentagon and about a possible fourth hijack and were horrified as we found that Flight 93 had crashed in our own state.
I'll never forget how each one of us in that small classroom had a name of someone they knew that worked in the WTC district or Pentagon, or just friends who lived in Manhattan. We watched as reports of possible car bombs outside the State Department drove our student teacher into a frenzy of panic. Her boyfriend was an intern for the Department of State.
It was the sense of not knowing that made the moment horrific. So many questions arose. "Who were the culprits?" "How many were dead?" "Where was the President?" "Were there other targets?" "Who is Osama bin Laden?" (For some, his name meant nothing on September 10, but would soon become common in the English vocabulary.) "Are we safe here?" And the most frightening question, the one that no one could answer: "What happens now?"
I remember dashing out emails for my classmates and anyone else who wanted to know the whereabouts of their family and friends. The school's network was flooded and it was very difficult to send messages and move from page to page, but I became the designated news director and kept tabs on about five different webpages. I can still recall the lump in my throat and the diminishing contents of the tissue box sitting nearby.
I spent my time while waiting for pages to download by watching the terrifying televised scenes. Before that morning they had only been common to memories of Pearl Harbor and movies like Independence Day.
As tears clouded my vision and sobs shook my body, I thought of how much I loved this country. How much I respected the men and women who would fight for it. I thought of the brave souls who ran into the burning hell that terrorists had made for us. I thought about a thousand things in that hour. And I knew in that single moment as Tower One fell in slow motion to her iminent death that I would never love this nation any less than I did in that instant.
A team is as strong as its weakest player, and on the morning of September Eleventh, members of the American team became equal and strong and resolute. We will never weaken despite many things that make us doubt our country and our government, ourselves and each other. We are all that each other has, and on a beatiful morning in September, we came to realize just how much really have.
Collection
Citation
“story3407.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 29, 2025, https://www.911digitalarchive.org/items/show/7437.