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demtenjeep

(31,997 posts)
Sun Sep 10, 2017, 10:33 PM Sep 2017

16 years removed and I can still feel the horror and frightening thoughts

as if it were yesterday.


Tomorrow, I teach a group of 8th graders who were not even born when 911 happened.

I just previewed the current events student clip that we use every morning and they have an awesome piece covering 911 and it brought back that day like it was still going on.

I wasn't born until 66 but can fully understand when those older than me say they remember exactly where they were on Dec 7

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16 years removed and I can still feel the horror and frightening thoughts (Original Post) demtenjeep Sep 2017 OP
Or when GP6971 Sep 2017 #1
It's an Important Part of History Leith Sep 2017 #2
yea, my students and I saw the 2nd plane hit demtenjeep Sep 2017 #3
You saw the actual airplane itself? dixiegrrrrl Sep 2017 #15
I hear you. Similar age. salin Sep 2017 #4
Like most folks over even 13 at the time who lived in the DC Metro area, williesgirl Sep 2017 #5
I dropped off my youngest at school and heard something on the radio LeftInTX Sep 2017 #6
My dad died suddenly on Sept 11 2000 MFM008 Sep 2017 #7
Sweet photo with numero uno... beautiful family. deurbano Sep 2017 #9
Thanks MFM008 Sep 2017 #14
I was working at the Air National Guard Memphis. rickford66 Sep 2017 #8
I remember being let out of school early BHDem53 Sep 2017 #10
I Was At My Kids' Grade School On 9/11 JimGinPA Sep 2017 #11
Stealing elections has consequences. Bush was on vacation for all practical purposes. L. Coyote Sep 2017 #12
I was teaching first grade and watched the second tower come down BigmanPigman Sep 2017 #13

Leith

(7,802 posts)
2. It's an Important Part of History
Sun Sep 10, 2017, 10:49 PM
Sep 2017

I had to think back to a major occurrence that happened about as many years before my birth. That would be the Korean War. To this day, about all I know about it is from watching M*A*S*H, which is next to nothing.

Your students have probably heard about 9-11, but they may know very little about what actually happened. It has been said that one needs to understand WW I to understand the 20th century. In the future, people will probably need to understand 9-11 and the resulting wars to understand the 21st century.

I remember where I was on 9-11. I was at my computer when my husband called me to tell me that an airplane just hit the World Trade Center. I turned on CNN, saw the wreckage of the first tower - and saw the second plane hit.

I shouted to my husband that a second plane just hit. He replied "that's what I'm telling you! A plane just hit the World Trade Center! Oh my god! Another plane just hit the other tower!"

He's still not the world's best listener.

 

demtenjeep

(31,997 posts)
3. yea, my students and I saw the 2nd plane hit
Sun Sep 10, 2017, 10:59 PM
Sep 2017

I was teaching freshmen, sophomores and Juniors at the time. We were doing research on explorers in that particular class.

salin

(48,954 posts)
4. I hear you. Similar age.
Sun Sep 10, 2017, 11:05 PM
Sep 2017

Up early writing a grant, radio on when the first tower was hit. I was staying with my Mom, who was having breakfast with a friend. Ran to them - we have to turn on the TV something is happening! CNN turned on - no ads - watched in horror as the second tower was hit. And then the stories of the other two planes. The images of paper debris floating down from the towers hit. Mom's friends daughter had been at the WTC for work (she is based in Boston) - was she still there? (thankfully no.) A cousin whose wedding my mother and I had attended a few years earlier - worked in the WTC, but was relocating to the West Coast - had she moved yet? (thankfully yes.)

Horror, disbelief, fear, pain and tears, a national shared tragedy experience.

And then that shared experience was quickly moved into a march to an invasion (remotely related, but related), and then resources pulled away from that conflict and targetted to a second - politicized and unrelated (but sold as directly related, at least initially by the rw echo chamber) second invasion. Divided nation... which has only gotten more devisive as the years marched on and the rw got further and further radicalized.

Don't know how to encapsulate that in a nonpolitical way to a group of middle schoolers with no visceral experience with it.

Not unlike how we could (later) kind of understand our more recent elders refer to the assassination of JFK, then RFK and MLK - but couldn't understand the signficance until we were older.

There are still enough vestiges of the aftermath in contemporary life (Trump's Muslim ban, the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the birth and growth of ISIS, and the reactions at home to each of those.) Maybe working from contemporary issues back to 911 and how they are related? (One time social studies teacher, just riffing in response to your thought provoking post.)

williesgirl

(4,033 posts)
5. Like most folks over even 13 at the time who lived in the DC Metro area,
Sun Sep 10, 2017, 11:13 PM
Sep 2017

I remember every detail about that day. I lived in Fairfax, VA not too far from Dulles Airport, and worked in DC. I was at a doc appointment when it happened and walked out of his office to the waiting room to hear folks crying and screaming while watching TV. I rushed home, worried about my daughter. My Nephew called me on the car phone to tell me he was dropping his kids off at preschool when the plane that hit the Pentagon flew very low above the car and they saw it hit the building. I was terrified and in shock like everyone else. Once home, the first thing I noticed was how many helicopters were flying low over the house. And, they weren't commercial ones! Forget being able to reach family members in Arlington or other parts of the country. All the DC metro area codes were crammed and you couldn't make nor receive a call.
My Mom was still alive then, in Ohio. She likened the aftermath to that of Pearl Harbor, only worse since this was in the US.
Never again... Hopefully.

LeftInTX

(24,560 posts)
6. I dropped off my youngest at school and heard something on the radio
Sun Sep 10, 2017, 11:16 PM
Sep 2017

Thought it was an small plane accident, then they mentioned a second plane. Got home, turned on CNN and freaked out.

MFM008

(19,782 posts)
7. My dad died suddenly on Sept 11 2000
Sun Sep 10, 2017, 11:29 PM
Sep 2017

We were trying to sort out what to do on the 1 year anniversary of his passing.
We spent the day in front of the TV. DAYS in front of the TV.
Dad sort of got lost in the carnage of 2001.
The sad thing is everytime I hear "9-11" throws me back to that night in 2000.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153796625798487&l=d53dd37015

Mom, Dad and me before my siblings ruined everything.....

rickford66

(5,498 posts)
8. I was working at the Air National Guard Memphis.
Sun Sep 10, 2017, 11:58 PM
Sep 2017

Watched the towers come down on the operations room TV. They were probably pretty busy from then on for the next few years plus. Went from a friendly guard waving us in and out, to heavily armed guards waiting for permission to admit us.

BHDem53

(1,059 posts)
10. I remember being let out of school early
Mon Sep 11, 2017, 12:43 AM
Sep 2017

when JFK was shot. When I got home it was the only time I remember seeing my Dad cry. I asked him once if he remembered where he was when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He told me he was lying on his bunk at Camp Claiborne, La. awaiting deployment to Europe. Plans were changed and was sent to the South Pacific. He was with the first Army group on Guadalcanal 48 hours after the Marines. I also remember watching television coverage of the MLK and RFK assassinations April and June of '68. Very sad times.

JimGinPA

(14,811 posts)
11. I Was At My Kids' Grade School On 9/11
Mon Sep 11, 2017, 12:51 AM
Sep 2017

I was supposed to set up a table outside the cafeteria to recruit Cub Scouts. I heard about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center just as I was pulling into the parking lot. I had worked in Manhattan previously and a small plane had crashed into a building then, so while it was pretty unusual it wasn't really alarming.

When I went in one of the ladies that worked in the office (who I knew from our boys being on a soccer team) kinda teased me, saying "Well it must be serious if they called in the Boy Scouts". (I had my Den leader shirt on) Anyway, we went into the AV room off of the library and were watching when the second plane hit. And then the Pentagon and in the field west of us in PA. They decided to cancel classes and send the kids home, but they decided not to tell the kids the reason. Since I was there I was gonna take my boys home, but my younger boy who had just started kindergarten pitched a fit because he wanted to ride the bus. So I followed his bus home. The towers didn't come down until after we got home. We were glued to the TV but we had to keep the boys busy at the same time to keep them away from it.

I had been in all of the World Trade Center buildings for my job. After the truck bomb in the sub-basement of the towers security was really tight. You had to wait in line at the corner across the street by the federal building. They checked ID and they looked under you vehicle with a mirror on a long handle. Then you drove down through a checkpoint again showing ID. Then you parked by the security desk where they made a copy of your ID and issued a temporary pass and told you where to park. I had been all the way to the top floor of both towers, sometimes waiting as much as 45 minutes for a service elevator to come back down. So I think I was even more freaked out, not knowing exactly what the hell was going on but having had that experience at the Trade Center.


I was in fifth grade when Kennedy was assassinated. I had walked home for lunch that day and run into a classmate on the way back. We were clowning around a little until we walked into the classroom. Everyone was upset, some girls were even crying. Our teacher kind of yelled at us saying "Oh is it funny to you that someone shot the president?" Of course we had no idea and when we told her that she just told us to sit down and be quiet. They let us out early that day too. Back then they didn't have 24 hour news channels like we do now, but the weekend after the assassination it was nothing but live news reports on every channel. We were glued to the TV then as well and saw Oswald shot as it happened. I was in shock that whole weekend and really couldn't wrap my head around what was going on.

I think because of how I was traumatized back then I was really careful about keeping my kids away from the news for a while. I knew at 5 & 8 they weren't going to really understand it and as they did become aware all I tried to do was make them know that we were all safe.

L. Coyote

(51,129 posts)
12. Stealing elections has consequences. Bush was on vacation for all practical purposes.
Mon Sep 11, 2017, 12:51 AM
Sep 2017

What a different world we would inhabit today if they had not stolen the 2000 election.

BigmanPigman

(51,432 posts)
13. I was teaching first grade and watched the second tower come down
Mon Sep 11, 2017, 12:58 AM
Sep 2017

5 minutes before I had to let the kids in (West Coast time). They should have closed school. I don't know how I was able to stay calm. It was the hardest day I ever had to teach. I went to art school in Greenwich Village and used to see the Twin Towers through the arch in Washington Square walking to class every day.

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