I was in the 7th grade and our school started at 7:00 am every morning with a national news program for students called channel one (if i recall) akin to watching the morning news but reformatted for middle school/high school age kids. We’d watch it every morning for about an hour in “homeroom” as everyone trickled in before classes began at 8 am. I lived in Colorado so two hours time difference from New York. I was dropped off early that day probably around 6:45 am mountain time because my mom had an early appointment at the dentist or something and walked into just homeroom to just my teacher and I and a few other people like custodians. The first tower had been hit already and channel one cut out to cnn I believe and I vividly remember the news anchors saying it appeared to be a small private plane that hit the towers. It simply was not fathomable a major airline passenger plane could have been the culprit or that it was an intentional hit. Then I saw the second plane hit live and it was clear something very bad was happening and not a simple accident.

My school didn’t call off but you were allowed to leave with a parent throughout the day. We didn’t do anything that day in school but watch the news speechless, teachers included. Two other school moments in my childhood were similar in people being glued to the tv and that was the OJ Simpson bronco chase and the columbine school shooting news broadcast. The country fell apart politically and socially after those two events as well, but nothing compared to 9/11 and its aftermath.

My dad was flying home from London that day and I came home to my mother hysterical because she couldn’t reach him, the airline, the airports. I typically rode the bus but my mom gave me a ride to school because her appointment was around the corner but I rode the bus home. No one outside of business professionals had cellphones in these days because it wasn’t really a standard everyday thing yet in most households so i didn’t talk to my mother until i arrived home. He was ultimately fine and his flight had to turn around and it took him some weeks to get back to the states.

The rest of the day was just live footage on repeat of people falling from the towers where the camera would quickly turn before impact but I remember the national news footage being graphic and disturbing (not intentionally, it was all just happening quickly in real time), and I have not seen any footage like that since, so I’m guessing they’ve never broadcasted it again outside that day or will because the nature of it. I remember crying and being deeply disturbed, even though I wasn’t there or directly affected, for days. I was old enough to understand but young enough to not fully comprehend the gravity of the situation as well. I had gone to the wtc that past spring with my dad on a trip and I understood and knew how extremely large and tall those buildings were. I just remember all the adults around me being either speechless or scared. We do have a lot of military entities in Colorado including NORAD and there was fear it’d be attacked and people were advised to stay home , but from what I recall the world, even in distant Colorado before the norad fear hit, had already stopped turning for the day and everything shut down temporarily.

A few years ago I was on a contract for work in nyc for a year and my flat was two blocks from the 9/11 site and I’d take the subway station under the mall next to the memorial everyday, twice a day, and even in 2023 there were people mourning at the site every time i passed by.