Every member of our community will always remember where they were on September 11th 2001. I think of that date and where I was often.
I was teaching my first period class at Danbury High School. It was one of my all time favorite classes. Good kids, solid students, who liked United States history, a class with a good, positive, personality.
I gave out our quiz, completed my daily attendance report, and turned on the computer. I immediately saw that the press was reporting a small plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I could tell that the plane was not a small plane from the pictures posted on the web. I turned the computer monitor around to the class, asked that the students put down their pens, and announced that something serious had happened in New York City. From there we watched history explode before our eyes.
I think of the students who were in that room with me all of the time.
We share a moment in history.
Eight years have passed and those kids are twenty five. Some of them have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others have begun families and all have entered into adulthood.
Eight years have passed for us since that horrible day, yet 9-11 seems like it was yesterday.
I will always feel a bond with the young people of my first period class on the third floor in D-wing of Danbury High School. A group of teenagers who aged quickly and who learned more about the world than they had bargained for when they walked into my classroom that morning in September.
The tragedy and the horror of the moment, the absolute fear that everyone of us felt during those desperate hours of the attacks. The quick inventory that is taken, where is my family?, is anyone in New York today? Do I know anyone who works at the World Trade Center? The Pentagon?
The wounds of 9-11 are still fresh for those of us who live so close to New York City.
Danbury lost its share of residents in the attacks, and has sent many of our young people across the globe in service to our republic. They have served our country with courage and with bravery.
Yet, eight years later, there is still an air of unfinished business. We have not put our finger on the spot that makes us feel that things have been set right.
Even after eight years our nation’s spirit is still wrestling with how to make things right .
But eight years ago, I was with a group of seventeen year olds, on a warm fall morning, and watched them lose some of their innocence, and saw fear in their eyes that was much more deep and sinister then anything ever imagined.
The attacks changed the students in that room. The world became a different place for those kids and for us. A darker place.
That is one of the reasons we still have to set things right..
May God bless our fallen Firefighters, and their familes.
May God bless our fallen Police Officers and their families.
May God bless our fallen EMS workers and their families.
May God bless our fallen Military Personnel and their families.
May God bless our America.
Good Morning Mark,
You know that we disagree on some important issues affecting the city of Danbury.
However, your narrative about your and your students personal experiences on 9/11 is very thoughtful, and stands worthy of sharing with both those who were alive on that day and those who were not yet old enough to appreciate the gravity of the events which unfolded before our eyes.
Also, looking forward to you visiting my show on Comcast – Progressive Soup – soon.
Thank you for sharing.
David A. Stevenson GRI
p.s. – now that America has its eyes more clearly focused on Afghanistan and those who really attacked us, we might be able to achieve closure as a nation in a more timely fashion.
Comment by David A. Stevenson GRI — September 11th, 2009 @ 11:01 am
The tragedy in NYC on September 11, 2001 was serious business for terrorism/America was pulled into a war too avert a similar circumstance in the Middle-East..and maybe elsewhere/I remember in the 1970′s where NEWS Media reports showed some poorly managed attitudes with America’s personality on it..you have one set of circumstances and then you have the uproar of terroism..knowing that terrorism is a despot and dictatorship often leads to such violance as is the Gulf War..America has performed to complete the Big Job..but the smaller job of the poorly managed attitudes is still at play..in the NEWS Media or in the travels we share in Mass Transit–America is NOT a better place because we did the Big Job–but America needs to represent the smaller ends that need tieing together..the attack at the WTC was a last ditch effort of despicable people..looking at a more genuine lifestyle should be present..and it is NOT.
Comment by Mark S. Mocarski — September 11th, 2009 @ 3:08 pm