Thunderducks recalled the events of the deadly Sept. 11 attacks in distinct ways on its 24th anniversary earlier this month.
Dara Eason, a lead coordinator in the Office of Student Life and Engagement, said she remembers exactly where she was when she received the news of a plane striking the World Trade Center.
Eason said, “I had given birth to my daughter 11 days [earlier], and I was feeding her and kind of just doing the mom thing, and I remember my mom called and said, ‘You need to put on the news.’ And after that, the TV was just on for the rest of the day, and I just remember thinking, ‘What in the world have we brought a child into?’”
Eason said airport regulations were escalated for several months after the attack. While she was in Texas at the time, she felt the impact of the tragedy on her community.
“It seemed like everyone was on the same page,” Eason said. “All very American, you know, trying to figure out how to support each other and being just more aware of what’s going on and what we need to do.”
Students who were not yet alive to experience the events as they unfolded recounted what they learned about 9/11 during school or from stories told by their families.
“My mother had basically a limited-edition book which had pictures that were never-before-seen from the buildings that collapsed,” student Raina Williams said.
“I remember asking my mother when I found this book, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened? What is this?’”
Williams recalled being told by her mother how she believed the events that took place on Sept. 11 would forever be a part of everyone’s lives.
“The magazine printed the book so fast that the pages weren’t even given enough time to bind together. I remember seeing pictures of bodies, and it was a limited-edition book. There was one of an elevator that collapsed, and you saw a woman’s purse stuck underneath the debris, and stuff like that.”
While children generally learn about the Sept. 11 attacks as a part of history, some say it is difficult to replicate the sentiments that existed following the tragedy.
Victoria Spohn, a lawyer and a parent to a Richland student, said she had just returned from lunch to her office in England when she was told by a colleague that an airplane had struck the Pentagon. She witnessed the rubble of the World Trade Center three months later on a trip to New York and paid her respects at the memorial site.
“It seemed a very sad atmosphere because people were just going around looking at what happened,” Spohn said. “I don’t think they’ll ever have as much empathy for what happens because they didn’t see it in real time, if that makes sense. You know it’s really bad and that a lot of people died and it was an awful thing to happen, but I don’t think they’ll have as much compassion as the people who were alive when those things happened.”
Spohn spoke about how the tragedy negatively impacted communities in America.
“It really ostracized a group of people or a religion,” she said. “It was a turning point and I think people became very hostile.”
Spohn additionally compared the initial reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks to the way the tragedy is perceived today, saying she believes the increased accessibility to information on the internet has popularized multiple narratives about the historical event.
“I don’t know if there are more crazies or if people are just waking up a little more, but those opinions have become more popular. It’s like when you hear about the passports of the hijackers that were apparently found on the ground in pristine condition, and it makes you kind of wonder, why didn’t they burn on the combustion of the plane? So I guess the more people read into it the more they find their own narratives.”
