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Current Issue: Volume 130, Number 1 July 14, 2009
Ed/Op


Top Hat
World must remember September 11 tragedy

Posted 09-16-2006 at 3:42PM

It’s 8:46 am, first period and I’m in Mr. King’s European history class. It was a typical Tuesday morning in a typical all-American high school. The principal walked in and said that the U.S. had been attacked by terrorists. We were all alarmed, but none of us thought much of it. After that class, my emotions would change as I found that it was much more serious than I had once thought. I came across a girl crying in the hallway. She told me that a plane had flown into the building her father worked in. Her dad worked in the Twin Towers. I tried to comfort her and tell her that “it was probably a small plane; maybe a Cessna or something, you know these things happen every once in a while.” What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t a Cessna and that these things don’t happen every once in a while. I walked into homeroom and the TV was on. I realized that American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767, had hit the North tower of the World Trade Center. I continued on to second period, which in true RPI student fashion was AP Computer Science. The first thing we saw when we turned on the TV was the second plane hitting the second tower. America was under attack.

That day five years ago, I believed that five years later we wouldn’t be so different. I didn’t think that we would remember the events of September 11 as well as we do. I thought we’d be flying normally again in a year or two. Normal isn’t really normal anymore. Things did change. I remember the events of September 11 better than my graduation ceremony.

President Kennedy’s assassination, Pearl Harbor, and now the events of September 11 have changed the world forever. Your parents probably tell stories of how they’ve never forgotten what they were doing when JFK died. In a similar fashion you will never forget what you were doing when the attacks occurred on September 11, 2001. You won’t need to watch the History Channel to remember those images that you saw five years ago; they’re burned in your mind. I guess it’s a good thing that you remember the tragedy because it helps you remember the human element. Don’t ever forget that part. Don’t ever forget the firefighters that saved so many lives that day just to lose their own. Don’t ever forget the friends and family that we all lost. Don’t ever forget the day our nation stood together as one against terror.



Posted 09-16-2006 at 3:42PM
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