Where were you

Where were you when you heard the news about the planes and the towers? I was at school. I didn't have any classes to teach on Wednesdays until after lunch. I was walking down the hall and a fourth grade boy came out of his classroom and said, "Guess what just happened" in an excited voice. So I thought it was something good. Then he told me that a plane had just crashed into the world trade center. It was about 9:00 a.m. at the time. I couldn't believe how this could happen. So I went into the gym office and listened to Rush on the radio. The details were so sketchy at the time. When the incident happened at the Pentagon, some eye witnesses were saying they thought that a helicopter flew behind the Pentagon and blew up. And the second plane hit. That whole morning felt like a twilight zone.

My sister was at Nyack College at the time, and from their campus they could actually see the smoke from the world trade center billowing up to the sky. Then she heard the news that a plane had gone down outside of Pittsburgh, and she got sick and had to leave class because she thought that might be near us. Now I knew Somerset County was nowhere near us, so it didn't occur to me to call my family to tell them we were ok. So they were in a panic for a while until they could reach us. A lot of families came to pick their kids up from school because we didn't know if Pittsburgh was a target for these attacks. So the rest of the school day was really fragmented.

Later Dan and I ate dinner at Climo's in Cranberry. We sat near the window and were very conscious that there were no planes in the sky because all planes had been grounded. It was eerie. We went into a store to watch the TV coverage of the planes going into the buildings. It was the first time we had seen those videos. I just remember standing there watching and not believing what I saw. You could just watch it over and over and still not believe it really happened.

Later that night we went to our landlord's house to watch President Bush's address (because we didn't have a TV at the time.) I remember that it was very reassuring to hear his address and know that the whole country wasn't just falling apart, that the government would still function and that we would come through this.

And you just had to ask God, "What happened here?" Why? Six years later we still don't have all the answers, but the memories of that day are still fresh in my mind.