25th Anniversary for 9/11

“Do you remember where you were when…?”

I had a small group meeting today and this was one of the first things we talked about: Where were you when 9/11 happened?

(Of course, some of them suggested the other question they immediately think of is, “Where were you when JFK died?” Let me tell you, there’s a lot of wisdom in this group of ladies!)

I was in Chemistry class my senior year of high school.

I remember the teachers rolling those old TVs on stands into the classrooms so we could watch “history unfold.” It was unreal. Every class basically stopped. I think a couple of classrooms even had to share TVs.

The teachers told us that watching history in progress was more important than anything they had to teach us that day.

I don’t know if we would have been able to hear anything they said anyway.

It was the only thing going through anyone’s mind.

I remember feeling blessed to be in the Midwest, so far away from the tragedy, while my heart went out to everyone there. There was this sense of helplessness felt by all of us.

A solemnness fell across the nation.

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What I couldn't have known that day, sitting in my high school Chemistry class, was that only about six months later I would be standing in New York City looking at the rubble myself.

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September 11, 2001...

Then, in March of 2002, I flew with a group of high schoolers to New York City for a trip. Each of us raised funds through our churches to go and we didn't know each other. We were all from the northern Illinois conference for our churches.

I didn't even know would be so impactful. It was a trip based on connecting faith to the larger world view. We toured the United Nations, sat through several speakers on international organizations and how they contribute to health and peace in the world. We took a bus tour, saw Aida on Broadway, roamed through Chinatown, and were housed in a tiny NYC hotel that did not have Floor 13 (striking me funny). I don't remember the entire trip but one of the things I remember very well was walking around the ruins (literally rubble with fences around it) from where the twin towers were only about six months ago.

Side note: I went searching to see if I could find anything about this trip all these years later...If interested, this is the closest thing I can find on what trip this might have been, scroll down to page 2 where it talks about the Youth Plumbline Tour. I believe my group was the very first. How cool!

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More Than Two Decades Later

Then, in May of this year, I finally visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum. This time, I wasn't an 18-year-old looking through a fence at rubble. I was walking through a museum built to preserve what happened there.

Seeing the beams in person was incredible. Seeing the mangled fire truck was different than seeing it in a photograph. And the way the museum incorporates parts of the original structure—what survived, what was damaged, what was left behind—made the enormity of it all difficult to comprehend.

But what stayed with me most were the stories.

Stories upon stories upon stories are housed there.

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Maybe that's why we ask each other, “Do you remember where you were when…?”

Because history isn't only something that happens in textbooks or museums. Sometimes we remember exactly where we were sitting. What classroom we were in. Who was standing beside us. What the room felt like. I remember being a high school senior watching history unfold on a television.

Six months later, I remember standing outside the rubble it left behind.

And more than two decades later, I walked through a museum filled with pieces of that same day—and the stories of the people who lived it.

The buildings are gone. The rubble is gone. That high school Chemistry classroom is a very distant memory.

But the stories remain.

And maybe that's part of why we keep asking each other where we were.

Because remembering the event matters.

Remembering the people matters even more.