story20784.xml

story20784.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2006-09-12

When the World Trade Center towers were brought down by hijacked airplanes five years ago, I was in fourth grade. My sister woke me up and told me to come downstairs to watch what was happening in New York. I had never even heard of the World Trade Center before in my life. The only thing being shown on TV was a grainy recording of the first tower smoking and the second one being hit, played over and over again.
After eating breakfast and going to school, I had no idea what was going on until my teacher explained it to us. Then, all the students were assembled outside on the very steep hill holding red, white and blue papers to form the American flag. The image taken can probably be found online. The school was Trailside Elementary, in Anchorage, Alaska.
After that day, I never heard about it very often; only when the anniversary came around and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars flared up.
Thinking about the people who jumped from the towers instead of being burned alive makes me sad. Watching a documentary with actual footage of the towers and hearing the people who jumped hitting the ground was enough to make me cringe, not to mention the screaming people who were on fire. They knew that they were going to die and they had one last choice of which way they were going to go out.