Posted on 09/13/2014 5:52:48 PM PDT by jespasinthru
911 has come and gone, and the terrorists didn't strike us. Thank God. Admit it, we were all anticipating the Worst Case Scenario. Especially with our wide-open borders and the empowerment of Al Qiada's frontmen, "Isis". Not to mention the worthless, impotent leadership at the head of our government.
On the day the Towers fell, I was 10 years old. I went to school that day, just like every other day. But it just happened to be THAT school. Emma E. Booker Elementary in Sarasota, Florida. For two weeks before 911 we had been told that the President of the United States would visit our school to promote his No Child Left Behind Initiative. We had no idea what that meant, but to us it was like a coming holiday. For two weeks before 911 there were dozens of Men In Black wandering around our campus. Large, solemn men wearing dark glasses, whispering into the watches on their wrists.
On the Big Day, a lot of media vans showed up with satellite dishes on them. And around 10 AM, an announcement came over the Public Address System: "ATTENTION, STUDENTS AND FACULTY: THE SCHOOL IS NOW IN LOCKDOWN." This was after the second plane had struck the Towers. And all of us little kids had no idea of what was going down.
We were all herded into the main auditorium. There were lots of local cops on horseback patrolling the paremeters of the school so that nobody could get in or out. And there were lots of Men In Black everywhere. After President Bush left, school let out early and all our parents rushed in. A huge crowd of them, and they took us out of there.
Only then did we learn that there had been a panic and near-riot in our neighborhood. All of our parents and relatives had watched the towers fall on TV, or had heard it on the radio, or has followed it online. If the terrorists had known where President Bush was on that day, they could have dropped an airplane on Emma E. Booker Elementary School and killed all of us. Just to take him out. And the airport was only two miles away. And that's what caused a panic and near-riot in our neighborhood.
Later, after we were all safely at home, we sat transfixed in front of the TV with our parents and watched the Towers fall, over and over. Watched people jumping out of them to their deaths. Watched that ugly black smoke billowing into the pristine blue sky. Watched people running through the streets of New York as that huge cloud of smoke and ash chased them like a giant monster. Running out of their shoes just escape the devastation.
And my mama said to me: "We are watching History right now. You are just a baby, but your grandchildren will remember this day."
Thanks for sharing your memories of that day.
I’m the only one of my siblings who can remember JFK being killed (I was 4).
I also remember seeing Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV.
Man, all I can say is life is filled with a lot of bad stuff.
Thanks for sharing your memories. I’ve never seen an account by someone at the school Bush was at that day.
Thank you for the post. Never forget.
I was even younger than that. I’ll never forget it, though. It was pretty terrifying.
My niece told me this week that on 9/11/2001 she was in third grade
and on 9/11/2014 she is a third grade school teacher.
One of my boys was in the 2nd grade on 9/11. After watching the replays on the news for an hour or so, he asked how many more planes were hijacked.
Poor boy thought each replay of a crash on the news was a new, unique event.
Poor little guy.
Thank you for sharing.
Little was related via the media about what happened to the children at your school that day, aside from some media mocking Bush for not causing panic for the children in the classroom.
Very interesting, thanks for posting this!
My son was just about your age at the time. A lot of parents I knew weren’t letting their kids watch anything about it. I felt like he needed to because he needed to understand evil exists and what we were up against.
I still think it was the right decision. He’s a staunch conservative so at least it didn’t corrupt him! *whew*
I too, had a second grader. Picked him up after school, four parents in our Parish perished that day. They were on AA97, I do not remember what I said to him in the back seat, I could barely speak, but I did say that Daddy and I loved him and we were all going to be alright.
When the tsarnaev’s took out the Marathon.. he looked me right in the face after that and said “You said we were going to be alright”.
I was wrong.
We are never going to be alright until we defeat these animals.
Truer words were never spoken.
Each of us here does the best we can, with the tools we have.
From 9/11/01 to 4/15/13 was plenty of time to break it to him gently, that you and Daddy were not really in charge of the universe, and that sometimes very bad things can suddenly happen beyond the ability of any parent to control or explain.
Didn’t he graduate high school in 2012?
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