What I was doing on September 11, 2001

I posted this on a blog, but wanted to put it here too. 

I'm sure we will all remember where we were on September 11, 2001. I was working in an elementary school.  After being there awhile, I started my day. I happened to be walking past one of the rooms and wondered why they had a TV on in their room, set to actual TV and not a video or something. I didn't pay any attention to it after walking by, but wondered why the teachers and aides were gathered around it.

I went about my morning going from classroom to classroom, and at about 10:45 I was in the 5th grade class. One of the teacher assistants came up and handed me a note. The note said that one plane had hit the World Trade Center, then a second plane hit. My first thought was terrorism. and all those people. Then as I read further, the note said it was a suspected terrorist attack. My eyes must have gotten so big, and I must have taken a deep breath. I'm not sure what I did, but the kids in the desks near me all looked at me and asked what was the matter. I just looked up at the teacher who had just read the same thing. We were so stunned, but didn't say anything to the kids. At 11:10 I went out to lunch, and turned on the radio. They were just replaying the 2nd tower falling. Can anyone really describe the feeling, knowing there were people on the planes, and all the people in the twin towers? I can just about feel the same feeling I had then, just writing this, five years later. It was an attack on our country, an attack on AMERICA!

We went into a lock down at about 12: 00 noon. No one could get in, no one could go out. But we had to man the doors because parents came and picked up their kids. We couldn't stop that, of course. We hardly had any students left in the building that day. I can understand that because the first thing I did was call my boys, and they're grown, but it didn't matter. I just wanted to know they were okay.

We got word from the board of education that we couldn't tell the kids. At the end of the day, the principal made an announcement to the kids, saying that when they go home they will see and hear some things in the news. She told them to go straight home, but not to worry about what they hear, because they are safe, and it didn't happen here. Many of our students would have to go home to an empty house, and she just wanted them to know they would be okay.

That night I was out, and since I lived near an airport, I was accustomed to seeing planes in the sky all the time. But this night, the sky was empty. Way high in the sky I saw one plane, and the feeling was so eerie, because I knew it could only be a military jet, for nothing else was allowed in the sky.

The next day at school, the 5th graders were very upset with us because we couldn't tell them what happened. They felt they should have been told. I agree with them in a way, but it would have upset them, and scared them. In the days to follow we would hear from different kids that they had relatives, friends, or just knew of someone who had been on one of the planes or in the twin towers.

It's surly something none of us can, and shouldn't forget. It was an attack on our country, it was an attack against each of us.  That's my opinion.