I have often heard older adults tell me they can remember exactly what they were doing during the attack on Pearl Harbor or when the assassination of President John F. Kennedy rocked our nation to its core.
As a young child, I never fully understood the impact those historical events would have of the people who were alive when it happened. But that doubt was quickly erased on Sept. 11, 2001. To this day, I can vividly remember what I was doing.
I was a college student at Delta State University, exchanging one of my morning classes, when I heard another female student run up to someone beside me on the sidewalk.
“New York is under attack,” she shouted. “They just crashed a plane into the World Trade Center.”
Confused, I literally ran to the Student Union building, which was packed with students huddled around the television on the wall. We were all confused as to what was happening. But what we saw next on the news station made it crystal clear.
A visible gasp circulated through the large room when we all watched the second plane crash into the WTC. At first, we thought maybe we were watching a replay. But within seconds, we knew our country was under attack. And we were all silent.
“This is bad,” a stranger told me.
Even though we were hundreds of miles away from New York City, most of us DSU students ran to our dorm rooms, packed our suitcases and flooded the highways leading outside of Cleveland to our families’ homes in other communities.
We all eventually made our way back to the DSU campus, but there was a feeling of grief, uncertainty and sorrow among the student population for several days.
My own children asked me if I remembered 9/11 over the past anniversary this week. And I responded with the same answer those Peal Harbor and JFK assassination generations did with me years prior.
“I remember exactly what I was doing,” I replied.
“What was it like,” my daughter Elsie asked.
“It was horrible,” I said, looking down. “I’ll never forget it because it was the first time there was so much to be sad and even mad about. I can’t explain it.”
“I hope nothing like that happens now,” she said.
And turning off the television, filled with reports of war and bloodshed within our world, I couldn’t find the right words. There simply are none.
