On that Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001 after nine o’clock during second period (my conference hour), I was busy grading a set of French quizzes from first period, having a mug of hot chocolate, and listening to WFMT, my favorite Chicago radio station. My radio was an old wooden Zenith from 1955, but the tone and reception were excellent. It was a sunny day that allowed light to flood my classroom from the south wall of windows that overlooked the track and football field. The only other sound was that of chalk writing on the blackboard next door in Mr. Maicher’s business class. My radio continued to transmit music, the last selection being Aaron Copland’s orchestral film music for OUR TOWN by Thornton Wilder. Then suddenly the world changed in a matter of moments by that unforgettable emergency announcement.
Almost at the same time, the announcer on the radio and our school principal over the public address system spoke of an airplane smashing into the side of one of the Twin Towers in the financial district of New York City. The meaning of this news item didn’t register in my brain right away. The horror of the news was so extreme, that I was actually numbed into believing briefly that some kind of drama was being played out just to see if we were awake. The radio offered no visual images, so my mind had to fill in the pictures to go along with the spoken words. Just as the sharp reality of the first crash began to cut into my psyche, the second announcement came of the second plane slicing through the other tower. By this time Mr. Maicher, the business teacher was standing in my doorway with a look of perplexity and disbelief, putting both his hands in the air in a questioning gesture. He froze in that position for at least a whole minute and looked like an exhibit from Madame Tussaud’s.
When the bell rang signaling the beginning of third period, I stood in the hallway, as I always did between classes, to see and hear hundreds of students and teachers talking in fear and disbelief of the recent events. My third period English class was hyper that morning, wanting and needing to talk about what we had all heard in the announcements. By then it had been accepted that the crashes had been no accident, and more details were shared over the P.A. as they unfolded. My students wanted to talk about what had happened and to try to understand its significance, so that hour was spent in discussion and in a quick lesson on Pearl Harbor of 1941, an event before any of us had been born. The kids wanted reassurance, as though we might be the next ones to be attacked. My heart went out to them, as they were really shaken by the terrible but gradual clarification of what had occurred.
Needless to say, the rest of that week classrooms and the faculty lounge were abuzz with conjecture and much discussion of what we had all heard. The evenings that followed were filled with television coverage of the events of 9/11, and the images of those planes slamming into the two towers, the vision of those collapsing buildings, people leaping from windows to their deaths, crowds covered in ashes fleeing the area, the sights of the injured and bewildered citizens of New York in chaos were embedded forever in every American heart.
