I Will Never Forget

On September 11, 2001 I was sitting in my Children’s Media class at Auburn University. Class started at 8:00, but most of us got there around 7:30 to chitchat and compare notes on whatever assignment was due next. When class ended at 9:30 I was walking to my swimming class at the aquatics center, and a friend of mine from high school walked by me and said, “Can you believe what happened?” Of course, because I had been in class for an hour and a half, I had no clue. I will NEVER forget where I was when I heard. I was standing on the sidewalk between Jordan Hare Stadium and Haley center on Auburn’s campus.

Where were you, and what were you doing when you found out that everything in the United States had changed forever?

Now, fourteen years later, I am just sitting here thinking about how truly terrifying that day was. I made it to the aquatic center only to find out that my class had been canceled. My instructor’s sister and her sister’s fiancé both worked at the North tower. She and her family had not heard from either of them (they both were fine.) Auburn University decided not to cancel classes that day. They felt that it would send the wrong message to the terrorists. Hmm. Maybe so, but all I wanted to do was sit in my room and keep my eyes glued on the TV. When I made it to my social work class that afternoon, a classmate of mine said that her dad had been in a meeting in the north tower that morning. He got done with his meeting and walked outside the building to leave. He heard something really loud, looked up, and the plane crashed right above him. 

Let’s remember the people who died fourteen years ago today and their families. I cannot even imagine the pain they feel, especially when most of the United States has moved on, and forgotten how broken we were as a nation that day. I hope that I will never face another day like that in my lifetime, but I probably will. I just wish that people would be so patriotic and proud of our country all the time, not just when disaster strikes on our soil.