When the towers fell, my classmates and I were sitting in our classroom having just recently started the second grade. No one knew what was going on. We turned on the television and, amidst the confusion, the parents started picking up their children at school.
My mother came to pick me up after having left work and hearing of the news. She picked me up at the elementary school I attended. She was originally set to be in New York, however, the day of Sept. 11, 2001 for a meeting. The meeting was to be held in the World Trade Center.
She was set to be in New York that day, train ticket and all. She would have arrived by 8:15 a.m. to be at the World Trade Center by 8:30 a.m. The meeting was taking place in the north tower on the 82 floor, the first that was attacked at 8:45 a.m.
The Friday before the meeting, the client called to say that they had a last-minute emergency and had to cancel the meeting. That Tuesday, as she was sitting in her office in Philadelphia, the phone rang. It was her mother (my grandmother) and when she picked up the phone, my grandmother said, “Thank God you picked up the phone…I thought you were in New York.” My mother hadn’t heard about what happened at that point and she turned on the news to discover what occurred.
For a period of time, my mother felt guilty. She could have been there and was supposed to be. Had her meeting not been cancelled, she would have been in the north tower at the time of the attacks. She was spared while many others were not.
Despite being only 7-years old at the time, I still remember the chaos, as many others do, of 9/11. The teachers at school faced confusion, frantically trying to figure out what was happening, the parents making their way to pick up their children. Later in the day, my family and I watched the news of the events that had occurred that day.
People remember what happened that day and how it changed so much in our country. As many tuned into the radio or turned on their TVs that day, uncertainty and chaos were very much present. Sept. 11 is a day that still remains very much in our memories, 13 years later and will continue to be remembered for many years to come.
