9/11

by Tom Shafer

February 5, 2018

It’s hard to believe that twenty years have passed since our country was attacked by al-Qaeda, masterminded by Osama Bin Laden. Those of us who were alive on September 11, 2001, will never forget where we were and what we were doing on that crisp fall day.  Much like the assassinations of Jack Kennedy (my first memory), Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy — along with explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, these tragic events leave indelible impressions on the survivors — like high water marks left after a major flood.  You know that things will never be the same again, but you don’t know what that even means, and you don’t really know what tomorrow will bring.  You just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and persevere — because that’s what you do.  I was teaching that morning in 2001, completely oblivious to the fact that by the end of the day, our world would change in ways that we could never have predicted or anticipated.  What follows is a journal entry of sorts, something I wrote a couple of days later so that my memory of the day would not be tainted by false remembrance — or even romanticism that can occur when a catastrophic event is viewed from afar.  An excerpt from this appeared in USA Today on the five year anniversary of the event.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, started like every other day in my Language Arts classroom at West Carrollton High School outside Dayton, Ohio: homework turned in, lessons disseminated and discussed, a quiz given and completed.  The kids of course were engaged in the typical banter of high school fall: who’s goin’ with whom to Homecoming? — can we beat the ‘Burg Friday night? — where is float building this year?  As our first period came to an end, a colleague appeared outside my door and simply said, “An airliner hit the World Trade Center in New York.”  I quickly wondered if my brother-in-law Jeff, a pilot who flew in and out of LaGuardia, was flying today.

At the class change, I flipped on the classroom TV and stood witness to fire and smoke billowing from one of the towers.  Concerned, I turned the volume up in hopes of learning more about what I figured was an unfortunate accident.  As my next class of juniors and seniors entered, each student placed book bags and books on his or her desk and joined me near the TV, some murmuring that they had been watching news coverage in their previous classes, others, like me, now tuning in for the first time.  The bell rang and though engrossed as I was, I knew it was time to get down to the business of education.

“We’ve got lots to do,” I heard myself say, still thinking about the two or three hundred people who must be dead from the impact of the plane.  I started back toward the television to turn if off when one of my students pleaded, “Can we please keep it on?  Just turn the volume down?”

We did have much to do, but I too was just as intrigued as my students were.  Against my better teaching judgment, I agreed to keep the TV on (volume turned off) as long as they agreed at minimum to acknowledge my brilliant dialogue from time to time and not ignore me completely.  Little did I know then that with one seemingly innocent decision, I would be permitting my students to witness live a moment that perhaps would change history and define a generation.

We didn’t get far with the day’s first discussion.  We were covering early American literature, with gentleman plantation owner and surveyor William Byrd of Virginia being the day’s topic of edification.  The kids were trying hard to pay attention to me, but the pictures covering the TV screen were just too powerful for the likes of Byrd and me.  Just as I was about to give my kids the old ‘come on now, we need to get through this,’ one of them blurted out Oh my God! and I saw every set of eyes flash with horror before I turned to see a fireball on the other World Trade Center tower.  A plane had plowed into that tower, and my students had just witnessed it live.

From that point on, all of us were glued to the surreal pictures being transmitted from New York City to West Carrollton, Ohio – and across the world.  Together, we watched the fires spread and witnessed panicked people jumping to certain death.  Together, we watched footage of brave first responders clambering into both buildings while terrified people were trying desperately to get out of them.  Together, we learned about “the bombing” at the Pentagon (an early, erroneous report) and the related crash of a plane in rural Pennsylvania.  Then, sadly, together we witnessed the collapse of the first tower, followed a short time later by collapse of the second.  As we watched, a quiet yet gripping solitude descended upon my classroom.

No one cried; no one spoke.  We watched in silence as scene after horrifying scene crawled upon the screen.  Secretly, I felt guilty.  ‘We shouldn’t be watching this,’ I scolded myself.  ‘People are dying right before our eyes and here we are – here I am – allowing it to happen.’  And yet, we continued to watch and continued to be horrified.

The third period bell startled us from our collective trance.  Some students trickled out to lunch hesitantly, but most stayed, choosing instead to come closer to the television that unknowingly was changing their lives forever.  Very quietly, questioning voices began to fill the room for the first time in more than an hour.  Feelings were shared; theories were proposed; unanswerable questions were being queried and debated.  Those same voices that two short hours earlier had been discussing the normalcy of teenage high school life were being replaced by more mature voices pondering the eve of World War III and the cowardice of terrorist acts.  They were now even wondering if they were safe in little West Carrollton, Ohio.  As I slowly staggered from the room to perform my noon lunch duty, I tried to shake the terrible new images that were slashing through my brain.  I could not then; I cannot now.

When asked years from now where I was and what I remember about the day international terrorism reached our home soil, I believe my response will be truly unique.  I will remember forever the unbelieving horror that I witnessed in the eyes of my students at the very moment the plane crashed into the second tower.  As I think about it now, it tears at my soul, mostly because trapped in their horror-filled eyes was lost innocence, the innocence of a safe world that would be no more, the innocence of youth that would be replaced by the specters of fear and anger and uncertainty.

For me, the worst part didn’t come until very early Wednesday morning when the TV images were finally turned off and the painful reflection of quiet hit me for the first time since the sun’s arrival that now-infamous Tuesday.  The noise of the day had protected me from cynical thoughts that routinely crept around the corners of my mind.  But these thoughts were different; these new thoughts were unsettling and disturbing.  And, I could not hide from them or keep them away.  In the quiet tranquility of that Wednesday morning, one immutable truth finally emerged from the shadows and delivered its barbaric yawp from the rooftops of my brain: Innocence lost cannot be regained.  And for my students, after the unimaginable events of that day, I knew this truth to be true.

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