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An Easy and Moving Way to Honor One 9/11 Victim Each Year
How I practice appreciation for the victims of that day.
9/11 was my generation's JFK Assassination moment. Everyone knows where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.
I was droning my way through a calculus class in my senior year of high school. Our teacher, who also taught theater, was predictably dramatic in his discussion of anti-derivatives.
We heard a knock on the classroom door. It was my history teacher, Dr. Savas, who leaned in and said, “A plane has hit a building in NYC. We are showing it in the auditorium.”
Our teacher, always militant in his curriculum, made us stay for the remaining five minutes of our period. Then we migrated.
When we arrived in the auditorium, reality hit us. The visual of the burning tower left no question. I remember the hair on my arm standing up when a plane hit the second building. That’s when we knew it was deliberate.
There was also a vivid moment when the news reporters talked, as the camera zoomed in on smoke coming out of the building. Then, suddenly, the first building began to collapse in this cascading of rubble and concrete. The fast-talking reporters were suddenly silent in a way I’d never heard before or since…
