story11705.xml

story11705.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2005-08-10

I am a teacher in a small rural school near Kansas City. I work in the library, and at that time we didn't have access to a TV or radio. We got a call from another building (HS) that the planes had hit the world trade center in new york. I walked over to the high school to see what was going on and that's when I saw one of the school secretaries run over to the principals office and say that a plane had crashed into the pentagon. I remember walking into the high school library and past classrooms where they had access to TVs ....it was deadly silent and every person in each room was in shock and staring at the TV. I will never forget the looks on their faces.

When I went outside to walk back down to my school, i remember looking up and seeing all the airplanes circling to land at KCI airport. There were countless circling contrails in the sky...very, very strange.

Back at my school, We tried to find a way to get some info and a couple of staff members hooked up a radio and I tried to get a signal on a TV in the library. We also tried to get on the Internet to check the news websites like CNN, but none of the web sites would work. We only caught bits and pieces and were very frightened at what had happened. The staff members didn't intentionally inform the students, but they knew something was going on and eventually found out and were told. The students were very distracted and some even cried. We tried to continue the school day normally as best we could, but staff and students were very upset and afraid.
It was this day that caused our principal to make sure we subscribed to a satellite tv service so we could get information in case of another emergency.

When I got home that night I watched CNN continually all night and thereafter as much as I could for several days. I became obsessed with the news and remain so, to a lesser degree, to this day.