KC Tuchol

On 9/11, I had actually been sick, so I’d stayed home from school. My mother woke me up and said "Kelsey, come on baby. Come to the living room." I did, and we went where the TV was on. Nobody else was home; my two sisters were at school, and my dad was at work. And my mother started crying again, and I asked her what was wrong. She said, "Watch the TV. Just watch. It’s New York, baby." And so, I sat and watched as the second plane hit.

My mother was on the phone constantly – with my father, assorted relatives, friends. Then she turned to me and said, "Pack up what you need, Kelsey doll. And get me the emergency stuff from the basement." (Side note: My father is a survivalist type, so we’re kind of always ready to leave in the event of emergency.)

And then my father came home, and he went to get my sisters out of school. They came back, and we got our stuff together. We went over the emergency plans -- if we got separated, etc., where to go, what to do, and so on and so forth. The TV was still on while we planned, and I couldn’t take my eyes away from the falling towers, the screaming people.

And then my dad turned to my mother and my sisters and I, and he said, "I have to go." At that time, he was a driver and a semi-assistant/chairman of New Jersey Transportation. So he went, and got all the buses and went to take people out of New York – to hospitals, to their families. He transported dead people and wounded and just got people out of the city. I didn’t want him to go. But he went, and my mother, sisters and I all sat, waiting, either for somewhere else to get hit (New Jersey, in the tri-state area, is surrounded by power plants, Washington, DC, Philadelphia and New York…all in all, a bad place to be in time of war) or for my dad to call and tell us to leave if things got worse.

We sat and waited and cried. He never called, and we never left. And he came home two days later.

Rachel Connor

I have many scattered memories from that day. It happened during my first period class, but I didn’t hear about it until chapel, which was second period. One of our teachers came up and gave her testimony and was saying things like, “God is always there for us” and elaborating on Jesus’ gift for us. I didn’t know where the meaning of the chapel service was coming from; it was like the principal had hastily told that teacher to give her testimony. It wasn’t planned.

I didn’t really find out the story until lunch time, when my friends – a grade older – told me that the World Trade Centers had been struck; they kept talking at lunch, but I almost felt like I was in a daze. Terrorist had attacked us on our home grounds. Later on that day, I didn’t go to my advance math class because that teacher told me the class was just going to be listening to the radio. So, I trotted back to my lower grade, where they tried to hide the truth from us. I think they were trying to not worry us by keeping the truth from us, but it made me more fearful.

I also remember after school I was cleaning my grandmother’s house, vacuuming and praying at the same time. I was wondering if the Lord was going to come back that day and also if my family was still going on a beach trip – scheduled to start that week. I was two days away from 12th birthday. I see now how my religious upbringing completely affected my view of the world and my memories from that day.

Yi Lu

I was in 7th grade when it happened. I went back home for lunch and turned on the TV. The image of a tall building being struck by a plane and crashing down shocked me. I remember vividly, as if it were yesterday. The first lines that came to mind were, "Is his real?! Or is it another Hollywood movie? NO! It is REAL!"

And later, the whole afternoon I was eager to tell everyone around me that some famous building in America was hit by a plane. I rushed to my parents when they came home from work and reported the news, but it seemed they had already known about it and had been discussing it for a while. During the next couple of days, the news kept reporting the same events, and people started various discussions, both critical and praising, about America, which was still a very alien and unfamiliar country to me at that time.

DP Peterson

I was in the 7th grade, and there was an announcement over the loudspeakers to turn on CNN. When the teachers changed the channel, all I saw was these two burning buildings. I looked like a scene out of a movie. For a moment, I didn’t know what was going on, and it didn’t affect me. Then I realized what had happened and immediately felt sympathy. I think the whole school just shut down and watched the news. Of course, this is something I will remember because it happened in my lifetime, and it is something that will be remembered by many. We will always be reminded by the date 9/11.

Jess Stafford

Eight years ago on 9/11, I was in my first year of home schooling. My aunt Marie called and mom answered the phone, which she usually didn’t do. My aunt told us to turn on the news. We all got in mom’s bed, Nichole, Pete, Mom and me and watched as the second tower fell. Mom was freaking out and crying. My brother was 5 at the time and didn’t understand why mom was so upset. He sat in her lap and told her she would be okay.

My sister was 8, and I was 11. I couldn’t understand the significance of what was going at the time. I just knew I didn’t have to do math because we were watching TV. I remember afterward how everywhere you looked there were signs with messages like "God Bless America." I couldn’t understand how that made any sense. People died that day and mass reaction was for God to bless America. Really?! Where does that fit into this tragedy? I don’t remember much else because I’ve quite successfully blocked most of my childhood from memory.