A Personal Story: Remembering 9-11

This Summer, I had the pleasure of teaching and guiding my latest intern, Payge. Since my husband, Allan, and I both work from home offices, and Payge was going to be working here too, we spent a little time eating lunch together and getting to know each other. We learned how old, or really how young, Payge was, and realized that she had not been alive on September 11, 2001. As Allan and I shared a little of our experiences of that day, it dawned on me - these “kids today” look at 9-11 like my generation looked at Pearl Harbor. Talk about a full-circle moment. And it got me thinking again about that day, 23 years ago today. Where were you on 9-11?

In the Fall of 2021, I was a freshman at Kent State University, studying at the Stark campus so I could save money living at home and keep working my retail job at Freda’s Hallmark. I was technically a general studies major because I hadn’t formally decided between Architecture, Interior Design, and History - so I was getting my general studies out of the way.

The weekend before 9-11, my dad (a fifth-generation firefighter) and I randomly watched a documentary about when a plane had flown into the Empire State Building in New York City in 1945. Both history buffs, especially with WWII, we found it so interesting and discussed it several times that weekend. We talked some about how my dad’s parents lived through WWII, and how our current historical events (at the time) didn’t seem to compare to what my grandparents would have experienced. For example, Pearl Harbor happened on the morning of my Grandma “Mo” Boone’s 29th birthday. At that point, September 8-10, 2001, I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like for her. When we talked about all the historical events my grandmother had witnessed in her 88 years, we thought about what events we had lived through that would relate. I mean, how ironic was it that we were having this conversation, just days away from our own personal Pearl Harbors?!

That following Tuesday morning, my dad was at work, and I was home alone, the TV tuned to the Today Show, while I got ready for classes. Katie and Matt broke regular programming because a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center Towers. I immediately picked up the phone and called my dad at work. “Did you see this? We were JUST watching that documentary about the Empire State Building’s plane accident. What a coincidence!” But my dad could not talk. He said yes, he had seen it, and they needed to leave the phone lines open - have a safe day at school. I thought that was a little odd - usually, he could chat for a couple of minutes and was not in a rush to get off the phone like that, but I needed to get going to have enough time to get to campus, find parking and walk to my class, so I ran and forgot about it.

At that point, no one knew exactly what was happening, but I now know that even the fire department in Canton, Ohio recognized the danger those first responders were entering and that this was not a fluke accident. They were preparing for a possible emergency here, and also to send help to NYC if needed.

I got to school with a couple of minutes to spare and walked into unusually full and quiet halls, students and professors alike with their eyes glued to the TVs hanging in the halls that usually held announcements and campus news. What the heck was going on??? Someone had flipped the TVs to the news, and we all stood there in silence and watched the replay of the second plane hitting the south tower. 

I never made it to class. Emergency announcements were made in the halls - all classes for the remainder of the day were canceled, and the building was being evacuated. Evacuated?! What?! We are hundreds of miles away from what was being called Ground Zero. But, ok, I’ll miss a day of boring classes!

My mom was an X-ray tech at a doctor's office in the Belden area, so I thought I would stop and talk to her, and celebrate my now free day. (Obviously something was happening, but I still don’t think I grasped to what degree, or maybe I was just in shock?!) When I arrived, I learned that while leaving school and driving to my mom’s office, a third plane hit, this time the Pentagon in Washington DC. Now local businesses and schools were beginning to send employees and students home. My mom wanted me to get home right away so I would be there when my younger sister got home, and to start calling family members that lived out of state, and make sure everyone was ok - specifically my Uncle Jerry who lived in San Francisco and worked for United Airlines.

Now it was becoming clear. This was intentional. America was under attack. 

In the meantime, the South Tower had collapsed, and a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania (near where a friend of mine was attending college) that they believed had been intended for possibly the White House or Congress. I called my friend to check if he was ok, and he was - classes had been cancelled for him as well. Later that week, rumors were passing through the halls that this plane that went down in PA had changed course above the Canton area, and that is why buildings were being evacuated. To this day, I do not know if this is true, but boy did it stick with me.

Once home, I just barely got a hold of my family in California before cell service started going down. Thankfully, my Uncle was fine, but we would later learn that two United planes were used in the terrorist attacks, and he lost friends that day. Air travel as we knew it would never be the same.

Once home, we spent the rest of the day and night glued to the television, watching as scared New Yorkers ran from burning buildings, and brave first responders ran into them. I have never been more scared for my dad than I was on that day, knowing hundreds of firefighters would not be returning home. I was literally sick to my stomach to learn that Canton would be sending a few firefighters and reservists to help with the rescue and clean-up efforts that week. I selfishly was relieved when I found out my dad would not be one of them.

That night, as I lay in bed with the news still on my little box TV, tears streaming down my cheeks, I thought to myself. “Oh my God… this is my Pearl Harbor.” 

We watched the news non-stop for days after that. I remember watching the clip of President George W. Bush reading to young students as a staffer walked up to him and whispered in his ear, and his face almost immediately aged a decade. 

I remember watching papers flying from the smoky towers, and later learning that those were bodies - the pain and fear were too much, and many people chose to jump rather than wait to see if they could be rescued. 

I remember hearing we were now at war and being scared for my Uncle Marty and my friends I had just graduated with who were in the military, wondering what exactly that meant for them. 

I remember seeing my dad choke up every time someone asked him about it, or an update came up in the evening news. 

I remember taking a trip to Williamsburg with my “History of Virginia” class in the Spring and seeing huge tarps covering a section of the Pentagon as we drove through DC.

Every year after that, for at least a decade, our family attended a memorial service every 9-11. My church, First Christian Church of Canton, held several, from the father of Todd Beamer, one of the men who attacked the hijackers on Flight 93, risking his life to save the country from another attack, come and discuss his son's faith and heroic acts to outdoor memorial services where two large beams of light were shot into the sky to represent the towers. Local firefighters will wear their heavy turn-out gear and run the steps of the McKinley Monument while the names of the firefighters and other first responders are read aloud. The year of my 21st birthday, my parents surprised me with a quick weekend bus trip to NYC. The area surrounding where the towers had once stood was still blocked off, recovery efforts were still happening, and the land was just beginning to reach the end stages of cleanup. A permanent memorial was in the planning stages, but in the meantime, the Church that had become the spot where first responders would check in and get rest, first aid, food, and prayers was now a make-shift memorial. My dad brought one of his patches along with him, and laid it at a cross that was found in the rebel, formed naturally from the melting of metal and steel from the buildings’ construction. Piles of patches from other first responders were throughout the Church, and we had learned that at least weekly the patches had to be boxed up to make room for more. 

And then, one day, we realized that although we will never forget, we have begun to move on. 

On a gorgeous Wednesday evening in September 2013, at (now-closed) Bricco in downtown Akron, I spent three-plus hours on a first date with a gentleman I had met online a few weeks prior. 

While we sat there talking, it dawned on us: it was September 11th. 

We both immediately teared up, feeling a little guilty that we were there, and not at a memorial or doing something in remembrance. The conversation quickly changed to what our personal 9/11/2001 stories had been. 

That gentleman was Allan, my husband.

September 11th may mean something new to us these eleven years later, but we still spend every 9-11 remembering and reflecting. In 2014, we spent the week of Thanksgiving in New York City, and our first stop when we got off the plane was the current 9-11 Museum and Memorial. For being in the middle of such a busy and loud city, it remains one of the quietest places I have been in my mind.

So, here I sit, 23 years later, again reflecting on what was my “Pearl Harbor”, and I suddenly felt the need to get it all down on paper - my personal 9-11 story, at least how I remember it, a couple of decades later. My grandmother passed away in October of 2022, and I never stopped to ask her what 9-11 meant to her before she passed. She lived through two very scary, real historical, and somewhat similar events, but I know nothing of her feelings or memories of those days. I hope that my little story here encourages you to sit and reflect upon your experiences of 9-11, and gives you the courage to write your words down. I still get choked up just thinking about that September day, but I promise you, writing it down is very therapeutic, and an “easy” way to reflect and remember.