Memories of 9/11 on its 20th Anniversary

It is the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and like everyone else I have been thinking a lot about that day. I don't think I've ever written about it, so I wanted to take a minute to record my personal memories of that turning point in modern history, September 11, 2001. My story isn't of great cultural significance or anything, but everyone has their "where they were that day" story. So here is mine: the story of a young liberal arts student who watched in shock as an unremarkable day in early September transformed into 9/11 as we know it. 

I was nineteen years old, just starting my sophomore year at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. That morning, I had gone to the music practice rooms after breakfast with my friend Cathy, just to play around on the piano and sing. I don't know if we were practicing something for chorale, or just singing songs from Moulin Rouge (those were favorites of ours at the time) or what. But that's what I was doing when the airplanes hit the twin towers - singing. We had no idea it was happening. 

After our practice session, I headed to my "Perspectives on Latin America" class at around 10 am. A few other students were there, and one of them was saying, "Did you hear the news? Some planes hit the twin towers!" I remember not understanding - I didn't even really know what the twin towers were. The class was co-taught by two professors, and they came into the room happily chatting with each other. The student who had heard about the attacks asked them if they'd heard, and they went straight to the classroom desktop computer to find out what was going on. The room was quiet as we all realized something really bad had happened. The professors said they didn't feel like it was appropriate to teach class given the attack, and we should all go back to our dorms and check in on our families and friends. That's when it started sinking in that this was a big, big deal. 

I went back to my dorm room, which I shared with my best friend Laura. It was then I remembered that my dad had recently told me he was going to be traveling through New York City, Washington D.C., and Baltimore. I didn't remember the specifics of his itinerary, just that around that time he was going to be traveling between those cities. I called his office at The Rutland Herald, hoping he would answer, hoping that his trip had been the previous week, or was the following one. When I reached his direct line, someone else answered (I think a man named Kendal? I don't remember.) and a quiet terror entered my body. I told him who I was and asked if he knew where my dad was. He didn't know, and my panic started rising. If my dad wasn't at his office, then he could have been on an airplane that day, or in New York City. He could have been caught up in the tragedies we were witnessing. Kendal said he would call me if he heard anything. 

A group of us watched the news in the dorm's common room where I saw for the first time the planes hitting and the towers falling. The enormity of the situation became clear. I stayed near my phone. A little while later, my grandma called, and while we had a cordial relationship, she had never called me directly at school before. As soon as I heard her voice I started crying because I was sure something was terribly wrong. But she said, "oh, no sweetie, he's okay," in her sweet grandma voice. She had talked to Kendal, and he asked her to call me and let me know my dad was okay. I was standing in the hallway on the phone, crying as she reassured me that everything was fine. A janitor came up to me and asked if I was okay, and I told him through my tears that I was fine, that my dad was safe. He was checking in on all the students - everyone was just doing what they could for each other. 

At around noon students gathered in an outdoor plaza area by the campus cafeteria, and I only vaguely remember a professor or dean or someone giving a speech. I remember seeing someone wracked with sobs and being supported by friends, because a close family friend had died. There were a lot of stories of close calls going around - parents who worked in the building but had been late that day, things like that. The school was in New York State and many students had family and friends in the city. There were a lot of people making frantic phone calls to find out about loved ones.

Later in the afternoon, I had a practice scheduled for my ultimate frisbee team. We all gathered on the quad and asked each other, "Do we play? What should we do? What's appropriate?" And after talking it over, we decided to go ahead and play. I think we felt like going through the motions of normalcy would help. And it was the most quiet, focused game I've ever played. There was no goofing around, no hollering. Just a group of us completely focused on the game: pass, catch, pivot, pass, run, catch. It seems contradictory to describe an ultimate frisbee game as serious, but it was. We were all sad and scared. No one really understood what had happened or knew what was going to happen. No airplanes flew overhead, and the whole world felt quieter than it should. So we just did what came next: pass, run, catch, pass, run, catch.

I have one other clear memory from that day: the gut-punch realization, "Oh, shit, and Bush is president." I knew it wasn't going to go well, and I was right. I usually get an immature pleasure when I'm right about things, but in this case I'd much rather have been proven wrong by a leader who displayed good sense and kindness. 

I don't remember much else about what happened that day, but I have a terrible and funny memory from later that week. I went to a special church service, held soon after the attacks, with my friend Kelly to pray for peace and for the victims. We had gone straight from chorale practice to the service, and when we started singing the hymn, she and I were doing so badly at sight reading the music that we got the giggles, and I had to pretend to be crying and hide my face in her shoulder while she "comforted" me so we wouldn't look like awful people. Thankfully she was a good actor. 

The attacks on 9/11 and all the aftermath was an ever-present part of the rest of my college career. I went to protests and got flipped off a lot by people in passing cars. I remember being in the dorm and watching tanks rolling into Iraq even after millions of people around the world protested, and feeling so hopeless. I remember studying abroad and saying to people I met, "Yes, I'm American, but I don't support Bush!" I remember learning John Prine's song, "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" and thinking, wow, we've been doing this for a long time. 

So, those are my memories of 9/11. Someday maybe Taiya and William will write a school report about where their parents were that day, and I can refer them to this blog post. It was a strange day. The feelings I remember most are confusion, grief, disbelief, fear, relief, and that other feeling so many experienced: people coming together to support each other. Twenty years later we're living through another one of those "where were you when" moments (if a moment can last a year and a half), the pandemic. And I again feel confusion, grief, disbelief, fear, relief, but that coming-together feeling? That is sadly in short supply.