09/07/2026
Barton Library Remembers - Grady:
In many ways, the world we know today began on September 11th, 2001.
I was a Freshman in High School. It was a half-day, and all anyone looked forward to was getting home before 12 PM.
It was during my third class of the day - Phys Ed - when the instructor informed us that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Brief as it was, many of us dismissed it as an accident and nothing more.
Thirty minutes later, a student came into the weight room and shouted that the Pentagon was hit next. At which point, someone turned on a radio. This was before cell phones and Google, so we had only radios and the rumor mill until we could get in front of a TV.
The broadcast left us discussing among ourselves what was going on; first a plane into the World Trade Center, then another at the Pentagon.
Ten minutes before the bell rang, I got a Cherry Coke from the locker room’s vending machine and waited in the hall. Not even ten seconds passed before I turned and saw the entire locker room spilling into the Dance Room across the way. I figured someone must have gotten injured and decided to join the spectators.
Once in the Dance Room, I fell in with 50 students watching the television overlooking the floor. In a matter of minutes, the images - a burning skyscraper, a lone plane crashing into its side, and people falling from their windows like debris - burned themselves into our minds forever.
Out of the ashes emerged many hard truths: how the nation was more vulnerable than we realized, how the worst could happen at any moment, and how close the culprits were to home.
I lived in South Florida at the time. For people like myself, September 11th didn't just end in 2001.
In the weeks to follow, the nation would be shaken by a series of letters filled with the deadly compound, anthrax. Our mailbox went without mail for days after five envelopes of the agent were discovered at our very post office.
Over the years, I learned how the very town I lived in was also home to 13 of the 19 hijackers. Two of them frequented the area my Dad worked to fly crop dusters. My family and I also used to shop at a Winn-Dixie only a few blocks from my house; as did the very hijackers before they were dispatched to commit their acts.
Twenty-six years later, there is a lot to remember, and a lot more to learn. Possibly the most harrowing fact of September 11th was that it demonstrated how cruel - and small - this world was.
Although I’d like to think it was a sign that things were getting worse with the times, the ugly reality is that it wasn’t the case.
It just got caught on camera that day.
