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| The small memorial at Orange County Choppers. |
I
have little recollection regarding the night before 9/11/01. I remember that
the semester was just getting started and that I had class early the next
morning. I know that I was preparing for a trip into the city for the ASVAB and
that I was working on scheduling a meeting with the President of the college to
discuss starting an ROTC partnership with Southern New Hampshire University (a
partnership was later formed with MIT). I can also faintly recall hearing the sounds
of the Giants’ Monday Night Football game coming from a dorm room a few feet
away but there is little else that my memory possesses.
Overall,
it was just another cool New England night with the biggest concern of those
around me was starting off the year right and making sure that they got to
class on time the following morning. When I woke up on Tuesday morning I didn’t
hear anything out of the ordinary and I went about the early morning preparing
for class and taking a slow walk to the Academic Building. It really was a beautiful
beginning to the day with only a few thin clouds in the sky, a light breeze
coming off of the bay, and the temperature remaining crisp and comfortable.
When
I walked through the doors and glanced up at the television perched in the corner
I could see that something was going on but didn’t really take the time to
watch and process what was transpiring. I was running a little behind getting
to class but managed to get there by 8:50am, there was little else on everyone’s
mind and the conversation quickly lead to an early dismissal about 5 minutes
later. As I retraced my steps back through the building, I once again looked up
at that same television just as the second plane struck the South Tower.
This
is when we all knew that this wasn’t simply an accident and as the news and
speculation streamed across the screen I quickly pulled out my cell phone and
called my dad to make sure that his meeting at the World Trade Center the day
before didn’t carry over into the morning. Thankfully, it seems as though I was
one of the last to place a successful call as cell phone service was nearly nonexistent
by the time I got back to my dorm room and turned on the news. As Peter
Jennings shuffled through the information we all turned up the volume of our
televisions and walked outside to try and catch our breath. And as the fighter
jets screamed above our heads low enough to read the warnings on the
underbelly of the planes, we could hear the reports come in that the first tower had
collapsed.
The
rest of the week remains absent from memory as days seemingly condensed into
seconds while minutes felt like weeks. Fifteen years later and I still have
those memories etched in my mind. And I am sure that fifteen years from now
they will remain as vivid as they are today.
