September 11, 2001 was a day to be remembered forever. It is one of those events that many people remember exactly where they were when it happened. To comemorate the anniversary of this day, a few members of the Her Campus JCU staff are here to share their 9/11 stories. Join us as we reflect during this week about a day that changed our lives forever.
Jackie DiFrangia
Out of nowhere, I heard my grade school principal’s voice on the PA system. Since I went to a Catholic school, she said that we all had to have a moment of silence and say a quick prayer. After that, my entire second grade class looked to our teacher for an explanation, but we were only met with a brief look of sadness on her face. Back to our math lesson we went, like nothing had just happened. When I got home, I walked through my garage door, and I saw my mother sitting on the arm of our couch staring at the TV with a hand over her mouth. When I looked at the TV, I saw a massive cloud of gray-black smoke surrounding what was left of the Twin Towers. I was still too young to understand that 9/11 will be a date that will ring throughout American history forever.
Allyson Lippert
7 years old. That’s how old I was. One memory I have from that day happened after gymnastics. My mom picked me up from school and, of course, we were very happy to see each other. That night was supposed to be my first night of gymnastics for the fall. My mom assumed it would be cancelled. But it wasn’t. I begged and pleaded with my mom to let me go to gymnastics. I just wanted a sense of normalcy. Eventually, she gave in. Afterwards in the parking lot, my mom hit a pole. She didn’t have a cellphone at the time so she wasn’t texting or calling anyone. She just wasn’t herself. I started crying. I wasn’t hurt, but maybe this was the release I needed. The car was fine, but something about that incident stayed with me as other details of that day fade away.
Bri Pentuk
I was in third grade and while our teacher was noticeably distressed, frequently exiting and entering the room, we remained in our plastic seats, completely unaware of the crisis on loop on the televisions outside of our sheltered classroom. Every few minutes the PA system would go off, announcing another classmates’ name, alerting them that their parents were outside our school to take them home early. Some boy declared to the rest of us that he bet I’d be next to mysteriously get a half day, and since I had a dentist appointment, I waited patiently for my name on the endless announcements. But it was never called. When 3:15 came around, I walked outside to a front lawn full of families. Standing frozen amongst the crowd, my mother eventually found me and drove me home, where my dad was sitting staring at that looped television shot of the planes hitting the tower.
Shannon Poppe
I was only in first grade. I sat in the back of the classroom between these very obnoxious people, Isabella and Nichole. When the teacher told us what was happening, we stopped class and panicked about what was going on. They put a movie on in the classroom and other students were picked up from school. I went home that day and my mom bought an antenna for our TV so that we could spend the rest of the evening watching the news. I don’t remember exact details, I only remember that the sky was really pretty on the car ride home, and it didn’t fit the scenario quite right.