Kiara herring

Columnist

On Sept. 11, 2001, I sat in my kitchen waiting for my mother to make me a bowl of cereal. I went to the TV to turn on the Power Puff Girls, but it had been left on the news station my father watched the night before. I was looking for the remote to change the channel, and all I remember was a loud bang. My mother dropped my cereal on the floor and stood there in shock. She had to explain to me what I had seen; I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I was 9 years old, but that day I learned what the word “tragedy” meant.

Jack Baker

Columnist

I’ll never forget what happened on Sept. 11. I first heard about the tragedy in my second period art class, when another student, Mike Wall, told everyone what had happened. The whole class (and I guess everyone in the school) was in a kind of scared, confused shock all day. We didn’t do any work after that. In every class we talked and tried to make sense of the tragedy.

Parker Happ

Columnist

Walking through the sunlit halls of St. Mary Catholic, my seventh-grade self passed a classroom where students watched the south tower being struck. I froze, staring at the screen. This was the worst movie I had ever seen, except it wasn’t fiction. The images were confusing: Why would anyone ever want to harm America? We were the land of the free, a place of opportunity. Ten years later, the Freedom Tower is still under construction, but stands as a symbol of the pending democracy spreading throughout the Middle East. There is solace knowing that despite groups like al-Qaeda attempting to spread oppression, Arabs have chosen freedom. The Arab Spring proved people choose liberty over tyranny and topple repressive regimes or expel dictators. Keep Sept. 11, 2011, a day of transition and remembrance.

Aaron Brooks

Columnist

My memory to life prior Sept. 11 is at best hazy. As a sophomore in high school, life would have changed anyhow, but without Sept. 11 I feel it would have changed less. Thinking about life without Sept. 11 is like contemplating the beginning to a science fiction novel. When thinking of how that novel would unfold, it is sad that Sept. 11 had the effect it did on us. We will never be free from terrorist acts, and it is probable that another generation will experience heartache and confusion, but I hope they will learn from Sept. 11 and its aftermath, and will not be as altered as we are.

Martha Lueck

Columnist

During Sept. 11, I was in fifth grade at Poe Elementary School. I remember hearing an announcement about it, and students seemed to pay close attention. No one talked during the announcement, but students broke down afterwards. Some of them even had relatives that were near the Pentagon. While the teachers still taught class, they spent some of the day answering our questions. We talked about how many families must have been torn apart, crying at the thought of the same thing happening to us. That day, we learned how valuable life is, and how quickly it can be destroyed by a tragedy.

Alyssa Pracz

Columnist

I was in sixth grade when Sept. 11 happened. I remember all the teachers being frantic and constantly leaving classrooms to check the news, but at 11 I don’t think I completely understood what was going on at the time. The field trip we were supposed to go on that week got canceled, and I was upset. It wasn’t until I went home and talked to my parents that I realized how serious everything that had happened that day and how many people were affected by the tragic event.