Where Were You on 9-11? Reflections of a Former College Student

Do you remember where you were on 9-11? I do. So 7 years later, I'm finally writing down my recollections of the day. There have been a few memorable events in my life as a 28-year-old man, some for good, some for bad. I will always remember the exact day and time that I became a born again Christian (November 6, 1986), the OJ Simpson San Diego Freeway chase (June 17, 1994), the OJ criminal acquittal (I was at piano lessons on October 3, 1995), the day I proposed officially to my wife, (February 2, 2008, her 27th birthday), our wedding day which coincidentally falls on my birthday (April 26, 2008--though we planned it that way). Other more mature Americans may remember where they were or what they were doing when the US entered World War II upon the bombing of Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, (August 6, 1945), JFK's assassination (November 22, 1963), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech (August 28, 1963), Dr. King's assassination (April 4, 1968), Malcolm X' assassination (February 21, 1965), the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989), etc.

The day started out as uneventful as ever. I was a 21-year-old Senior at University of South Florida in Tampa, in my second semester of the Management Information Systems (M.I.S.) major in the College of Business Administration (COBA). I had a 9:30am morning class at COBA, Database Administration, and walking to class the campus was peaceful that Tuesday morning. When we got to class about 9:30am our professor told us "Hey, I heard this morning that an airplane flew into the World Trade Center in NYC." Well we didn't think it was that big a deal because, I remembered reading that on July 18, 1945 a B-52 bomber crashed into the Empire State building due to heavy fog. Though I discovered later that a B-52 (10 tons) is significantly smaller than the 767's (100-150 tons) that flew into the WTC. So I figured, hey it must be another similar incident, just another small aircraft flying too low to the NYC skyline. Eventually we were let out of class early and informed that USF administration was closing the campus early as a precaution. I still didn't think too much of the situation, I mean how bad could it be? So I wandered over to the Communications and Information Sciences (CIS) building next door, and in the foyer, one of the teachers had pulled out a classroom TV into the foyer and several students were standing around watching live TV news coverage of the burning World Trade Center Towers. I immediately felt horrified as I saw little specks falling from the top of the towers and realized that those specks were people who were jumping or falling from the burning buildings. After a little while of watching TV replays of Flight 11 and Flight 175 crashing into the North and South Towers of WTC, respectively, I left campus on the Hartline city bus which I rode to and from college. I went to my transfer point, University Square Mall, and walked into one of the shoe stores to look for some white tennis shoes. Soon University Mall announced it was closing all stores for the day, so I hurriedly picked out some all-white Nike's that were on sale for about $20.

Later during the day, as I watched TV and did some chores at home and I learned along with the rest of the nation about the demise of Flight 93 which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, and the Flight 77 that crashed in the Pentagon, and of course we knew at that point that the United States was on terror alert, that President George W. Bush was reading to an elementary school class when he heard of the WTC attacks, and that VP Dick Cheney was somewhere in a bunker. So began the buildup to the now infamous "War on Terror" and the [flawed] justification for the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003 that Sadaam Hussein was responsible for 9-11 attacks on the US.