story2207.xml

story2207.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I was in my third hour government class when I first found out about September 11th. I had just walked into class, and the TV was on and everyone just stopped and watched the TV. On the bottom of the screen it read that all the airports were closed, including the capitol city airport. My friend Deepa and I just looked at each other in shock. When my teacher Mr. Swan finally got everyone to sit down, we just watched the news all hour. It was hard for me to realize what had happened. All day in school we didn't do anything except for watch the news. In my fifth hour Algebra II class, my teacher's daughter had been flying that day, and he was leaving so he could try and contact her. I didn't have any family, or even know anyone in New York or in Washington, however, my boyfriend at the time lived in Pennsylvania, and I was frantically trying to find out if he lived anywhere near where the plane crashed. He didn't. I called him right when I got home, and I felt very relieved to hear his voice, even though I knew nothing had happened to him. I then called my Grandma to see how she was doing. She didn't really know exactly what was happening, and I had to tell her exactly what was going on. After that I called my dad, who lived a little while away in Dewitt, he was fine. The news that night was pretty horrible to see, it killed me that they kept on showing the same footage over and over again becasue they had no new information. I could see that Tom Brokaw had had a long day, he had a disheveled appearance on the newscast. To me, the worst thing was hearing the bodies hit the pavement, or seeing the people jump out of the windows. It also made me sad to see all the hospitals being prepared for a rush of people that never came. I thought for sure we would be going into war very shortly. Even though I felt sad for the people that had died, I never cried. I think because it never really hit me the gravity of what happened until months afterward.