We Must Remember

Yesterday I watched a video filmed at George Washington University. These university students were asked what national anniversary was coming up this week. The majority of the students had no idea. Mind you, many of these young adults were in elementary school when terrorists took down the World Trade Center towers. Their ages were in the single digits when the heroes of the flight over Pennsylvania yelled, “Let’s Roll!”, before they took back the plane from the people that meant it for destruction. These students were learning how to read and compute basic math problems, when a plane turned the Pentagon into a blazing inferno.

It saddened me to see the students fumbling for words, scrambling for something to say. Completely unaware. They are now, like we all were before September 11, 2001. Blissfully ignorant. That Tuesday morning was a calm and beautiful, blue sky day. We naively went about our normal routine, never knowing that our world was about to change forever.

We live in a world where terrorism now makes the nightly news. Buildings blown up, embassies burned to the ground, people murdered, american journalists beheaded, Christians martyred because they refuse to convert, new threats of ISIS members crossing over our southern border, literally hell bent on our destruction.

If we don’t remember the terror we felt on that day thirteen years ago….we are doomed to repeat the scene. We cannot afford to be complacent. We need to remain vigilant. Our lives depend on it.

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A blog post from my archives.

I remember that day as if it just happened……..

 

 

 

A Different World

11 Sep

The day was normal. Just like any other. Elementary school children chattering with each other. My teaching assistant and I were working with our reading groups on that Tuesday morning. A sunny day, nothing out of the ordinary…and then a fellow teacher popped into my classroom to tell me to go and watch the TVin the school conference room. I excused myself, leaving my kiddos with my assistant for a minute.

I stared at the television, not comprehending what I was looking at. The plane, the World Trade Center, the fire and smoke. People everywhere. The second plane hitting the building. News anchors eerily silent as, even they, had no words for what they were seeing. Chills ran across me as I stared in disbelief.

I numbly walked back to my classroom. Knowing that life was different now.

I told my assistant to go to the conference room.

I looked at the faces of all my young students and realized that life as we knew it would never be the same. These children would grow up in a different world than I had.

And it made me so sad.

September 11, 2001