nmah722.xml

nmah722.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-02

When I first heard our principal come on the announcements at the end of second hour, I figured he would tell someone to come down to his office. But he didn't say that, instead he tells us there was an apparent terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. My heart instantly sank from fear that the United States was being attacked by an unseen enemy, and I wondered "How bad is this going to get?" Previous to this announcement, my friends and I were doing what we always do at the end of the hour: joke around, get ready for the next class, etc. As we traveled back to our lockers, televisions were being turned on in every class, and some of my friends witnessed the second plane blast through the south tower. For the next few hours, we watched the events unfold, we realized that this would be our generation's "Kennedy assassination", knowing the exact time and place you were when you first heard. When the towers fell, that is when I realized that people were falling with it. Then the Pentagon was hit. The heart of the strongest military in the world, being attacked. How could things get worse. Then I went home and like everyone else, I fill my gas tank up even with the forty cent increase. I went to my Grandfather's after that. Being a World War II veteran, it was good that I could talk to someone who had firsthand experience with warfare. I thought to myself "My eighteenth birthday is in two days, there is going to be a war with a possible draft, I don't want to go off to a foreign land when my life is just starting off." My Grandpa could understand where I was coming from, he was in the same situation sixty years ago. If there was a draft, I wouldn't want to go, but I would defend my country if it came down to it- I mean, these people killed ordinary people who were going to work, I don't want to live with that fear of militants bringing their violence overseas.

September 11, 2001 and October 17, 2001 haunt me to this day. Everyday I remember everything that happened on these two days. On October 17, I stood on the site that was once the World Trade Center, now dubbed Ground Zero. About two weeks after the attacks, my school was asked to go to the New York area and assist in the recovery effort. I signed up as a way to sacrifice my blood and sweat in the largest recovery effort to date. The first day there, some of my classmates and other schools went to a warehouse across the Hudson river to organize the endless donations that came from across the country. I thought to myself, "These items will go directly to the rescue workers at Ground Zero," thinking that I won't be able to go to the site, but I'm still here assisting as best I can. Then came the next day. I took the opportunity to volunteer to actually go to the site and help first hand. Through some miscommunication we missed our first shift, and we couldn't take another shift, but through some loopholes we were able to take the graveyard shift from midnight to eight in the morning. I was tired by that time, but I was up for anything at that point. On the bus ride there, everyone was quietly chatting, then came the spotlights and our first view of the collapsed north tower. A gasp then dead silence, I finally realized I'm looking at the site where 3000 people are buried, it's not a good realization. I walk off the bus at the Marriot Financial Hotel a block away from the site, and the first thing I notice is the smell, a smell that is engraved in my memory for the rest of my life, a smell that's like no other, and it is totally indescribable, only to think what two burning buildings and the burning of a way of life can smell like. So I started my shift cleaning pots and pans, then to actually feeding the officers, firefighters, federal agents, and volunteer rescue workers. They brought in the smell with them, I tried to hold back my gagging, but it was unbearable, I thought to myself, "These guys are doing this on a twelve hour shift everyday, how do they function?" During the night I took a few breaks, I would walk outside, each time I would ask an officer permission to walk to the "Pit". Each time I did I would stand motionless for fifteen minutes, and all my senses would form one indescribable emotion. One which has the ability to paralyze you where you stand, which is exactly what happened to me. Which is why every day since that day, I remember what happened that night, even little things that most people forget ten seconds after it happens. I told most of that night to my friends and relatives, I even made a ten minute speech at school and I almost had people in tears at what I had to say. And then there are a few stories about that night that I keep for myself, stories I can look back on and relate them to life in general, and why people do what they do. I can truly say this experience was a life-defining moment for me.

Obviously, September 11, 2001 should be remembered as the darkest day in American history. One as bad as December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked, or that day in 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. This attack was an attack on citizens, not the military or law-makers, but people who woke up everyday and had their coffee, got upset at frequent traffic jams, and then took an elevator to work in an office tower from nine to five. We should also look at this day as one where the finest public servants in the country banded together to start the largest recovery effort in the history of the world in one of it's darkest hours when we could have just ran away like the terrorists wanted us to do. We had nearly the whole world backing us up on that day, so not only did we unite our country, but we united the world.

I put up a small American flag in my room a few months after September 11, 2001. I know what it took to get where we are today, thirteen colonies united 220 years ago to create a country where you have guaranteed freedoms to exist as a person. I put the flag up as a reminder of that.