story1532.xml

story1532.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-28

As a teacher, I had just taken my 3rd grade students to gym. My principal came to my classroom and told me that two pilots had crashed into the World Trade Centers. It took me a few seconds to process, but my new husband (we had just gotten married in July) had left for a business trip that morning to NYC. His plane was due to arrive in NYC at about 8:30 am. Sick with worry and the unknown, I went to the nearest phone and checked my cell phone voice mail. Thankfully, there was a message from my husband telling me he was okay and that he would call me later. Not realizing the full spectrum of what was truly happening (like many people, I thought maybe they were small Cessna-like planes), I went to our school Media Center where there is a TV. What I saw will never ever be forgotten. The sight of the towers burning and the faces of the people in the streets is something that I don't think any American will ever forget. It was horrible being in my classroom, without radio or a TV, not knowing what was going on. Shortly thereafter, more grief for our country set in as the Towers collapsed. Even though I had gotten the message from my husband, I was still terribly worried since I knew he was in NY but I didn't know exactly where and how long it would be before he got home. One of the worst parts of the day was trying to initially hide worry and fear from my students. I had to pretend that nothing happened in order not to scare them. In the early part of the afternoon, I had everyone sit on the rug in our room and I told them in simple terms what happened. They had so many questions that I wanted to answer for them, but didn't know the answers myself. We must have sat together for an hour talking about what happened. I realized later that day that no matter how old they are, whenever anyone asks them if they remember what they were doing when they learned of September 11th, they will remember their 3rd grade teacher telling them about it. That is one memory I wish I didn't have to be a part of. Fortunately, my husband made it out of NYC safely and ended up driving back home that night. Since he was in the car the whole day, I knew he didn't know the magnitude of what had happened. We sat together, watched TV and cried and thanked God that we had each other, while others weren't so fortunate.