Where were you on September 11, 2001?

September 11, 2001 is a date etched in my memory. I was in Goodwell, OK at the time and worked at the university, which was walking distance from my house. Since my first class was not until 930 am, I had plenty of time to enjoy breakfast, a couple cups of coffee, and catch up on any morning news. When coverage of the first airplane to crash into the World Trade Center happened, I thought it was a horrible accident. And then, the second plane hit the Twin Towers. My wife and I were no longer considering this an accident. I had to get ready for my first class of the day, so I did that and when I was getting ready to leave the house, my wife told me that one of the towers had collapsed, as if the fire wasn't horrific enough. I want to say that by around this time, we already knew that the Pentagon had been struck, and that a crash landing of yet another plane in rural Pennsylvania kept it from hitting its intended target. To say it was an awful morning is an understatement, as the news just kept getting worse. At some point that morning or maybe later in the day, news broke that the likely terrorists were Saudi nationals who hijacked several airplanes as part of a terrorist plot.

So, when I got to my classroom, I think it is safe to say that none of us were in any mood to cover material on lifespan development, but rather we were trying to process what the hell was going on. I'd have at least one international student (her native country was Egypt as I recall) who was concerned about how she would be treated by the community. Thankfully, I am not aware of any mistreatment, and she would graduate a couple years later. In general, the mood was mostly of worry. To be honest I don't know if I even had lunch that day. I don't think I would have been all that hungry. I was a bit worried about a person I traded jazz CDs with in 2001. I had mailed him something a few weeks earlier and I was expecting a CD from him. So I emailed him and waited. It would be a few days. He clearly had other things on his mind. He did assure me that where he lived and worked was far enough away from the WTC that he was never in any harm's way. That was a relief. Neither I nor anyone else I spoke with in the immediate moment had any idea of just how our world would change in the aftermath of that awful attack. 

It is crisis moments that can bring out the best and worst out of us. On the positive side, I saw people pull together and organize emergency blood and food drives. Donating blood seemed like the least that any of us could do, and I was glad to do my part. Anyone who took our democratic institutions for granted stopped doing so for a moment. Across the world, leaders and citizens of many nations showed their solidarity with us, and NATO made it clear that the alliance was meaningful - Article 5 was invoked for the first and only time (so far). Even in that dark hour, there was a genuine feeling of unity. It didn't last. The evening news was bleak. News anchors like Peter Jennings looked frazzled. The contours of the terrorist attack took shape, and we learned that the mastermind had based himself in Afghanistan, where the Taliban hosted Al Qaida, led by Osama bin Ladin. There was little doubt in my mind that there would be a response to this attack, which made perfect sense. I didn't know at the time that the response would be way out of proportion to the attack itself nor did I know that personal friends would end up doing multiple tours in Afghanistan and later Iraq (which the GW Bush administration offered dubious links between the Iraqi regime at the time and the terrorist attack on 9/11). The "War on Terror" would end up dividing us Americans ultimately. That all would take a while to unfold. In the moment, the rescue and recovery operation was first and foremost on our minds.