Students and staff at Three Rivers College experienced the same shock and disbelief on Sept. 11, 2001, as they watched events unfold on the East Coast that many Americans did.
On the 20th anniversary, they have shared some of those memories.
Professor, speech communication
“I remember not knowing anything about that before finishing my 8 o’clock class on a Tuesday. When I left that class, I could already tell there was kind of a different vibe. Someone asked me if I had heard anything. I came to the Communications office, where they had a TV connected to cable.
“Several others from the department came down and watched TV for half an hour. By that time, the one tower had already been hit, but the second one hadn’t, so we actually saw on live TV that second one occur. I remember at the time not fully grasping what this was all about. I had never really lived through that kind of attack on our soil before. As that began to sink in, the rest of the day was a blur.”
Associate professor, communications
“I was a Three Rivers College student, a sophomore in my third semester. I was working at Hastings, enrolled in the music program, living a typical college life, living at home, coming to college.
“That Tuesday morning, I was sleeping at the time that all the news broke. My mom had just returned home on a flight from South Carolina the day before. She woke me up and turned on the TV in my bedroom and said, “Margaret, you need to watch this. A plane hit a tower in New York City.”
“My first thought was, ‘This was an accident. Why is my mom waking me up for this?’ Before I knew it, there was another explosion, and I couldn’t connect what was happening until the reporters said another plane had hit the tower.
“We were staring in awe, not really understanding what was happening but watching it happen. Then we watched the towers fall live on television, and we were just in shock more than anything. The fact that it was happening on television, watching it at home really was a surreal experience.
“I went to my 11 a.m. Swingsations class, but we didn’t have class. We sat in class, a lot of people were crying, huddled together, hugging each other, praying — it was finitely an experience of complete and utter shock. I had a shift at Hastings that night, and I remember an eerie feeling of people lined up to be sure their cars were gassed up. At Hastings, nobody came in that night; it was one of the quietest shifts I ever worked.”
Chair of Communications, Agriculture, Languages and Fine Arts
“I was in Salem, Virginia, at Roanoke College in southwestern Virginia. I was in my dorm room, and I had a 9 o’clock class, but I thought I would be late, because I wanted to see this.
“It was the strangest experience, watching that, being confused and scared because the descriptions of what was happening were so strange. We’ve obviously had a plane crash, but it must have been pilot error — it started like that.
“You could tell by the body language of the newscasters that things had changed. They were getting things updated and talking to people inside the buildings. I remember a lot of those conversations still; they had people going into the buildings to interview people.
“I was close to Washington, D.C.; we were only a few hours away. When the first tower was hit, they canceled classes really soon. I went back to my dorm and started watching it again. We were considered a risk area, because there was an ammunition plant nearby — for maybe three or four days we were shut down.”
Financial aid advisor
“On 9/11, I was actually still in grade school, third grade, and I remember our teacher coming in and talking about something. They took us out of class and crowded us into another class we had never been in there at Oak Grove, and they turned on the television.
“I remember seeing the events and not really understanding what was going on, but our teacher was crying at the time. After a time of watching that, they turned off the TV and decided to release us from school. So we went home early, and my mom had come home early, and so she took me in, and sat me down, and tried to explain everything.
“I was very young, so I really didn’t understand the full gravity of the situation, but I understood well enough to know that they had decided to cancel school. We were nervous and scared because my dad was a trucker, and oddly enough, he was up there at that time.
“Fortunately, he was nowhere near there, but he had been driving in the area previously. We didn’t know for a time since he didn’t have a cell phone or any way to contact us. Eventually, he stopped at a payphone and let us know he was all right. He had been backed up in traffic because there was a lot going on at the time. But I just remember it being a very scary situation.”
President
“On that day, I distinctly remember driving into work, relatively early in the morning, passing gas stations and wondering why so many people were in line. I was working at State Technical Institute in Memphis, and I would drive from Southaven, Mississippi, through Memphis to our campus.
“Normally, I listened to recorded music in the car, so I did not hear any radio news or broadcasts.
“It struck me as an oddity — ‘Wow, what is going on?’ Every gas station has all these cars lining up to get gas. Right next to campus was a convenience store, and I stopped to get something.
“They had a TV behind the counter, and I looked up and saw the Twin Towers on the TV, and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. What is going on?’ My first thought was, ‘There’s been a horrible accident.’ Then I read the byline on the TV, so I very quickly made my purchase and got to the office, because I figured even in education, this was going to be an extremely chaotic day.
“Past that, it was almost a blur of being either locked to the news on the TV or answering questions about what we were going to do and how this was going to impact our operations. It was just a complete gut-punch with what was going on.”
Assistant professor, social science
‘I was teaching at Southern Missouri Christian School, and it’s seared in my memory.
“I was going to the copy machine before class started. The principal came down the hall and said two planes had crashed into the towers in New York, and I remember stopping and looking at her, saying, ‘One could be an accident, but two is an attack.’
“I went and found the television that we had; it wasn’t connected to cable, all we had was an antenna. I turned it on and got the best picture that I could, and we spent the rest of the day just watching.
“I remember being in class when the towers were falling; it was just so terrible and so scary, because you just didn’t know how many people were in those buildings. We were at lunch talking about who did this.
“I said, ‘In 1993, the attack was led by Osama bin Laden, so surely, this is him again, isn’t it?’ It was such a sad day.
“I remember going home, and that’s all anyone was doing. We were all just glued to the television trying to find more information. We found out about the Pentagon and the flight in Pennsylvania, and it was just so horrific. I don’t know that we got a lot done in class that week, because we probably talked about that; I don’t remember talking about anything else that week.”