September 11, 2020

“They were my kids”

Essay

One

I was tired the morning of September 11, 2001. The night before my husband broke his toe so we were in the emergency room of the local hospital until 3AM. We thanked the babysitter for coming so last minute and were in bed before four. I had to be at my desk teaching by 7:25AM. I remember the harsh glare of the bright sun blinding me as I turned into work.

I was feeling sorry for myself. We told the babysitter to sleep in since my husband would not be commuting into Manhattan so he would feed our two and four year old breakfast. I was tired.

After periods one and two I left the classroom to look for coffee. It was around 9AM. “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center.” I followed the voice to the AV guy’s office to see what was on the news. I watched a second plane plough right into the building. It did not look like an accident. The people around me were speechless. I found coffee and went to teach period four. My students were not aware so I just went on with the lesson. By period five my students, who I barely knew, wanted to know what happened. They told me that the Pentagon had been attacked at 9:37AM. None of my students had cell phones so they were asking for passes to the office to make phone calls–so many had family who worked in Manhattan as secretaries, firemen, MTA. I let them go, their anxiety hurt, but most were back in moments. Phone calls into Manhattan were not connecting.

Period six I found a phone and called home. My husband told me that friends from his uptown office had witnessed the second plane hit. He asked if I knew that now the towers were falling. Our babysitter’s husband worked for Sanitation and he had been directed to park his truck at the United Nations to protect it. She was a wreck. My husband assured me that our kids were playing. I went back to the AV room and watched the buildings fall again and again.

Back in the hall were the terrified people–students whose parents worked in the towers, a colleague whose son was scheduled to fly that morning was not answering calls, another had friends who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. So many of our faculty had family who worked for FDNY and NYPD.

I crawled back to my car after the last bell rang. I was so lucky. That broken toe kept my husband out of the city. I was too exhausted to drive, too wound up. I turned on newsradio and listened to Mayor Guiliani’s press conference. Over three hundred firemen were missing. People were lining up to give blood. There was still hope. I cried tears of both grief and relief.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I had to see my kids and smell their innocence and absorb their luck. They still had two parents. I found them using their mega-blocks to build the tallest tower ever, a tower we did not dismantle for a very long time.

Ginny DeFrancisci

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two

A note came around that read, “A plane hit the Twin Towers. Don’t turn on the computer or listen to the news.” I imagined it was a tiny, little plane. An accident. I continued teaching my third grade class as if nothing was wrong. At 11:00, I brought my students to lunch and walked into the teachers lounge. A colleague sat at the table with her head in her hands. “They’re gone,” she said. “They’re really gone.” “What’s gone?” I replied, still not getting it. “The Towers. They’re just gone.” I kept teaching, trying to keep a calm front to keep the kids from worrying. We told them there was an accident in the city and we would be waiting together in the gym for their parents. We brought our classes to the gym and held our breath, not knowing for sure if their parents would come. Many worked in the city. We are only 40 minutes away by train. By some miracle, every parent came.
Stacy Mozer
 Three
One of my son’s elementary school reachers lost her husband that day; he was on the floor hit directly by the first plane. Every year on September 10th, she’d sit the kids down and explain why she wouldn’t be in on the 11th. She’d talk about her experience, about calling every hospital in New York, and invite the kids to ask any question they wanted. My son was very young at the time and never wanted to talk about that day –truly weird, it was also parent’s night that night and everyone was trying to figure out where their loved ones were (lots of folks working in the city). That amazing teacher allowed him to open up about it…
Joanna Novins
Four

On my Birthright trip in 2011, I had the opportunity to visit the Kotel or  the Western Wall as it is more commonly known. It is one of the holiest places for Jews, the last remaining remnant of a time long gone. A one way communication with g-d. We are told never turn from the wall. I left a part of myself in that wall. My lungs have breathed the holiest of air.

I remember 9/11. At least I think I do. Maybe I don’t remember the minutes or the seconds, but the feeling has stuck with me almost 20 years later. That summer 2001, I had visited the towers, my feet squishing in the carpet by the TKTS stand, on an outing with my parents and some friends.  I remember that feeling of mystery and awe that I got every time I stared at the towers on drives or on city outings or when my dad told me the story of how when his friend put the antenna on the top of the tower he mooned a passing by helicopter and the image I think became a postcard. So New York. Then that day, I don’t know if I would be the person I am without that day. I woke up like I did and prepared for a day in the 6th grade, one week into a new school year at a new school. I remember the newscaster saying or is this just something that I have seen since “that it was going to be a beautiful September day”. I packed my bag and rushed out to the car, the sky was blue so blue. The day proceeded like normal it would be a few hours before I would know that the world had changed forever. This moment I think a lot about especially in the era of COVID-19, on a trip down to the bathroom I saw a line of kids and parents trying to get into the building and out of the auditorium.  My mind automatically went to the place, is this a disease outbreak, lice, asbestos…I walked up to the principal and asked “What is going on” he told me to stay calm and go back to the classroom. When I got to the classroom Ms. Bongivanni the computer teacher and my friends cousin was there and told her and I to pack as fast as we could. As fast as we could, I didn’t feel sick and was scared…. what had we done wrong. The students in the room around us stared…

When we finally were united with our parents and my friend’s little sister, we exited the first set of doors and my friends little sister said as we walked down the steps “the towers they fell…the twin towers they fell…” I was in shock and awe in that 15 second declaration. The doors to the school opened and I could see smoke and dust billowing from the tip of Manhattan. This is how I learned that the world had changed, my dad’s pick up truck radio was retelling the story when we got in the car and he had learned the events of the day through a police radio at a polling site and had come as soon as the towers fell to get me.  This is just one story, my story, the story of the day the sky went from blue and bright to gray. There is more to this story and one day maybe I will share but for today my lungs have breathed the holiest of air and the saddest of air.

Rebecca Bruckenstein

Five
On September 11, 2001, I watched the Today Show as they covered the first plane flying into the tower. Although I had left education that June and was investigating going back to school for my PhD in American Studies, when the second plane hit, all I could think about was who was in the classroom with my former students and were they offering those young people comfort.

My house is in the flyover for the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst and for hours, the fighter jets shook my house. My parents were in Florida on vacation and I was home alone. Through my fear, I spent most of the day relaying our local New York news to my friends on an internet discussion site I belonged to because they did not have access. I remember the towers falling and losing the television signal because the local stations all had their satellites there. Soon, NBC had relocated its news staff and was broadcasting again. My online community provided comfort and tracked the news all day today, and to this day, even though most of us have moved on, we all check in on September 11 and post our memories and condolences on that original thread from 2001 that the webmaster has retained for us.

The next week, I applied for a new high school teaching job and started on October 1, returning to the career that has been my life ever since. I’m currently working on my PhD in American Studies.

 

Jennifer Ansbach

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