Ten Years

Of course I've been thinking about it all week. We've been talking about it in school, too. Half of my students this year weren't born yet when the terror attacks happened. The others were just babies. But they know what we're talking about. Actually, I've spent this week talking about war and an attack on the U.S. every year since I started teaching sixteen years ago. 

This is also the week of the anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore in 1814, when a man named Francis Scott Key was on a prisoner exchange trip out in the Chesapeake Bay aboard a British war ship. He'd gone to get his friend Dr. Beane, who was being released after having been wrongly arrested. But the men had to stay on board the British ship until the bombardment of Fort McHenry had been completed. Fortunately, the British lost that battle, as Mr. Key learned in the smoky dawn as he peered from the deck of the ship looking to see which nation's flag was flying over the fort after the two day fight.  "T'was the star-spangled banner..."  So now, since 2001, I've taught a history lesson where we compare the two battles that happen 180 years apart--how frightened everyone was that our country was under attack, who was attacking, what was the outcome, how did we fare as a nation. It's a good way to teach and discuss and show them that history just keeps happening, whether it was long, long ago, or just long ago (in the life of a 9 year old.)

I was teaching fourth grade in 2001, too. I kept seeing people go in and out of the library and huddle around the television that was on in there. Finally, around 10:00, I took my students to gym or art or something and I went into the library. It was appalling. I knew that CoolGuy would probably stay late at work and I knew that nothing would ever be the same. By noon, parents had taken away most of my students. They were just frightened. Our school was located 30 miles south of Andrew's AFB, and one mile across the river from Patuxent NAS. We were accustomed to jets flying overhead, but we didn't know yet how many jets were still waiting to crash into something.

My students wanted to know what was going on, since there were only about 8 of them left in our classroom. They guessed a plane crash; I told them, yes, a couple of them in New York and one in Washington D.C. One of the students left in my classroom looked stricken and said, "My mom works in Washington."  No one had come to pick him up. He left on the bus, and until the next morning when he returned to school with a smile, I didn't know if his mom had come home or not.  A girl in our son's high school lost her father at the Pentagon. One family in our school lost an uncle in NYC.

The worst part of our day was waiting for our PTA president's husband. He worked in DC for the FAA and was scheduled to be in the Pentagon that morning for a meeting. You couldn't get a cell signal for hours. She was in the building helping with her children's classes. We were really good friends. My first year there, her daughter had been in my room. She just quietly worked on copying and cutting and pasting in the office, and we all just prayed silently as we went on with our lessons.

At 12:30 he came striding through the front door of the school. Our building at that time had open pods, so it was possible to see the length of the school and into the foyer by the office from just about anywhere. As we saw him come into the building, we all just fled to the front and he was engulfed in a group hug of teachers, office workers, and his wife as we all (including him) cried with relief.

He'd been driving to his meeting when someone called and said that the plane had hit the Pentagon and that he should just get out of town. Everyone was leaving and the roads were a mess. Every government building was being evacuated because there was still a plane up there that was known to be hijacked. The last we all heard was that jets had been scrambled from Andrews to intercept it.

I got home that afternoon and hugged my sons. CoolGuy came in later and we knelt and had family prayer. It was so surreal and way too close to home. I can't even imagine what it was like for people in Manhattan. It simply made us want to hug our families and friends and thank God for our own safety.