September 11 Digital Archive

story337.xml

Title

story337.xml

Source

born-digital

Media Type

story

Created by Author

yes

Described by Author

no

Date Entered

2002-04-02

911DA Story: Story

I was at work in the Department of Political Science at
Valdosta State University. It was a very busy day, with
many students stopping in to talk about advising issues and
with many of my own teaching and research projects underway.
A little after 9 am my daughter called from Georgia
Southern University near Savannah. She had just started
college there a few weeks earlier and relayed the infor-
mation about the initial attack. She called back many
times that morning. The combination of the event with
her absence from home made the experience more searing.
She was actually watching TV when the first tower
collapsed, and she was on the phone with me at the same
time. Another instructor came in to say that she had
actually seen the second plane hit the second tower.
As I went about normal activities, rumors abounded about
other sites that were hit. Most of those proved to be
untrue. I was surprised that the university held several
meetings in the afternoon. We conducted normal business
but talked at various points about the nature of the
catastrophe. In the evening with my family I watched the
continuous replay of events on TV. My reaction was a
mixture of disbelief and intense fellow-feeling with
the experience those on the plane must have had. At
the same time, I tried to imagine what might have led the
terrorists to perpetrate these acts after living such
seemingly normal lives in American towns. Anger and the
desire for retribution and swift justice were
important emotions as well. This surprised me somewhat,
since am not normally comfortable with the use of
violence as retribution. In the coming days, as a
political scientist I tried to fit the pieces of the
event into the framework of political science and even
planned how to incorporate it into courses and research
projects. At the same time, the profound sense of horror
did not go away.

Citation

“story337.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 4, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/13760.