I almost didn’t write this. Then, hours before the calendar turns to September 11th, I decided I should. It’s a pivotal moment not just in my life, but in all of our lives as Americans. The whole world, honestly.
My friend Mickey wrote a really nice article about how 9/11 affected his generation, Gen X. You can read it on his website, Retro Ramblings, or by clicking the link above.
Technically, I’m a millennial, so I suppose I have a different viewpoint than him.
I’ve written many articles over the years that briefly mention how my generation has had to face what feels like one world crisis after another. There will be a thousand articles about that today alone.
The world doesn't need another lengthy article about 9/11. There are plenty of those. This story is mine, specific to me and in my own voice. I'm not sure it will be the most interesting thing for all of you, but I’d like it written down somewhere for myself, and someday, when my daughter reads this.
I grew up in Rockland County, New York, thirty miles north of New York City. In the fall of 2001, I was a senior in high school, and that particular September I spent getting into the best shape of my life for the upcoming hockey season. We had a chance to be pretty good that year, and I wanted to be the starting goalie.
My best friend in high school, John, was the team's other goalie. We were both seniors, and both pretty darn good. We’d grown up playing together, and it was a friendly rivalry over games and playing time that never got in the way of the friendship. Practices were easy because we’d goof off while the rest of the team ran drills, then get used for target practice toward the end.
We alternated games all season. His last one was a victory... a darned good one. Our coach had planned to split the game, since it might be our last ever. John held the lead halfway through, and Coach looked in my direction. I shook my head no. I wasn’t going to walk in and ruin Johnny’s win.
Thankfully, we won, and I got to play one more time. I played the regional semifinals, and we lost, 3–1, but with over forty saves, I didn't go down without a fight. That was the end of the season, and of my high school hockey career. The college I was headed to didn’t even have a team (they started one when I was a junior, and I played there too).
What does that have to do with September 11th? Directly, nothing. Indirectly, everything. We played under the shadows of New York City and the weight of that day. The uncertainty of our futures, the uncertainty of our life paths, and now, the one constant in my life since kindergarten, ice hockey, was over.
I definitely struggled with so much change that year.
But back on that Tuesday morning in September, we went to school like any other day. I drove myself to school, parked, and waltzed into first-period Astronomy (yes, we had a planetarium) and slept through second-period Physics. I can’t even name third period.
Can you believe that? I don't even remember what class I was in when it all happened.
What I do remember is the computer lab. You see, kids, that’s what schools used to call a room with thirty or forty desktop computers, because nobody had laptops or iPads in each classroom back then.
We were in there to research something, and toward the end of the period the principal came over the loudspeaker. He told us, quite nonchalantly, I might add, that there had been an airplane accident in New York City. If anyone needed a counselor or to call their parents, they could come to the office.
It sounded strange, especially because of the casual way he said it made it sound like a small plane, not an airliner.
We all immediately abandoned the task at hand and tried to log on to the news websites. They were all jammed with global demand for updates on events we weren't yet aware of.
Eventually some kids loaded enough to read the headlines: it was an airliner. Two, in fact. We still didn’t know it was terrorism. With what little we had, most of us figured two planes had collided mid-air and fallen into the city.
You also have to remember we couldn't text our friends in other classes and see what they knew. Nobody had cell phones back then. Actually, I guess I did have a pay-by-the-minute phone to use should I need a ride home from hockey practice or to make calls (minutes were free after 9pm and on weekends), but that Motorola brick certainly didn't text anyone.
Even if it could, the cell networks were down all over New York.
Third period ended, and I went to lunch. That year I had two lunch periods, fourth and sixth.
From then on, the rest of the day was one long lunch period.
My friend Ryan met me in the hall before I got to my seat in the cafeteria. His third-period teacher had turned on the radio, and he filled me in on the news reports that both planes had been flown into the World Trade Center on purpose.
In a daze, we skipped lunch and walked out to the parking lot to sit in my car and listen to the radio. Some schools nearby would let kids leave campus for lunch, either for McDonald’s, home, whatever, as long as you were back in time.
My school didn't. The doors stayed locked, and you couldn't even run out to your car to get your homework, or you'd have to make a stop at the principal's office.
Not that day. We just walked right out, and nobody even noticed. As a parent now, that would horrify me even more on a day like 9/11, but I digress...
We sat there for the rest of the period with the same news playing on nearly every station. By the time we reached the car, both towers had fallen. It was truly unbelievable.
Thenewscaster'ss shaking voice made us uncomfortable. Unbelievable. We just kept saying the same thing over and over: “Oh man. Holy shit. Oh man…”
I'm not sure who, but one of us said what we both knew: our lives and the world would never be the same. By the time we went back inside, we also knew the attack “seemed” to be over, and that two more planes had gone down, but we both knew that anything could happen.
As we walked back inside, a girl left the principal's office, bawling her eyes out. Her parents worked in the city right by the World Trade Center. Thankfully, I learned days later ned they had made it home. Seeing her crying put me on edge.
Next was English with the “cool” teacher. He let us vent, ask questions, and just talk. Some kids were already missing; one or both parents worked in the city. The rest of us sat there thinking about the enormity of the moment and the weight of it all. None of us knew what to do or say.
Another lunch period, and the rest of the day blurred. I drove my girlfriend home and stayed while we watched the news, seeing the images and video for the first time that the rest of the world had been watching all morning.
Mom called, angry that I wasn't home. The cell phone network was still spotty, and she hadn't been able to reach me for a while. Given what was going on, she expected me to be there when she came home from work. So I returned home, and when I pulled in, Granny was standing in the driveway talking with Mom about the events of the day.
Dad got home and said that from some of the high points in town you could still see the smoke billowing up from the city. Friends who lived up there confirmed it the next day in school. I saw it myself that day after school when, instead of going straight home like Mom told me, a bunch of us piled into my rusted-out Ford Tempo and we drove up the mountain. It lingered a few days after.
That night, though, was a blur. Just watching the news, hoping for some shred of news. Confused, worried, angry. I felt a vulnerability I'd never felt before, praying and hoping the attack was over and that my family and I weren't in danger. I hesitated to turn out the light that night when I went to bed. Silly, I know. I lay awake till after midnight, listening to news reports on the radio that replaced the music I usually listened to as I went to sleep.
My brother played Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” on a loop for days. Longtime readers know he always liked to blast his music through the house and into the neighborhood, but nobody minded this time.
For a little while the country felt like one place. Flags went up. Nobody was angry at one another. People were even, dare I say, kind. I hope we find that belonging again, but I’m afraid those days are gone.
Too many people in our country seem to hate where they live and the people they live there with.
I had started flight lessons that summer, aiming for my Private Pilot Certificate by the end of high school. After the FAA grounded all airplanes, and then the restricted airspace around New York, it was weeks before we could fly again.
My flight instructor then was the coolest guy I knew. I really looked up to him. Phil liked me too. I had a knack for flying and would always show up prepared and eager to go.
Phil was laid back, and I never saw anything bother him. I was his first student after the attacks, and when we walked out to the plane, it was quiet. Nobody else was flying; the airport was a ghost town.
I'll never forget the look on his face, or the seriousness in his voice, when he leaned across the engine cowling and said, "Jeff, I never thought I'd have to say this to anyone. But if that shit ever happens to you... you put the plane in the dirt before you ever let them do anything like that with your airplane."
In my mind, he took the last pull on his cigarette, said that, and flicked the butt onto the ramp where smoking isn’t allowed. I can’t confirm it happened in that moment, but it certainly happened at other, less somber times. It wouldn’t surprise me if it happened then too.
As the days went by, we all slowly went back to normal. George W. Bush stood on the rubble down in the city and let us know he and all of America could hear us. Rudy Giuliani was beloved as "America's Mayor." Mike Piazza hit a home run that let New Yorkers release days of nerves and pent-up anger and sadness into one big happy moment and a catharsis we all needed.
We all grew up a little more that September. We were changed. The world we’d grown up in didn’t exist anymore. I weep for my child and her children when I think of the messed-up world we are leaving them.
Several kids in my school lost parents that day. I wasn’t among them, thankfully. Their lives were changed even more irreparably than I could imagine.
Twenty-five years later, I’m saddened by what we’ve done with the years we were given after that morning. Infighting and the degradation of society have brought us to the brink. We got the warning. I’m not sure we kept the lesson.
As we look back over twenty-five years, let us not forget that feeling right after September 11th, 2001.
To finish, I’m stealing a paragraph from Mickey’s article (sorry, Mick):
We carry that memory with us. It shaped us. It changed us. It reminded us that life can turn in an instant, and that the only way forward is together. And for a generation that learned to stand on its own, 9/11 taught us the value of standing with others.
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