9/11 Special Edition

feature6 l September 9, 2011

The DayLike everybody, I thought it was a small…

you know, like a single engine plane. That’s what most people thought because many years ago a single engine plane hit the Empire State building. That’s just kind of what every-one thought, it was like ‘oh a plane hit, could be a small plane, an accident,’ you know some amateur flier was flying too low or went on the wrong course.

So that was kind of my first reaction. I was in Chelsea when the first plane hit and my editor told me to get on the train to go down-town and get down there. While I was under-ground on the subway the second plane hit. I got out of the ground on Chamber street and started walking toward the Trade Center.

As I’m going, I’m kind of trying to get quotes for the stories so I’m talking to differ-ent people and trying to get people who had seen something. And when I was talking to people, people would say, ‘another plane just hit, I just saw another plane.’ Usually, when you are getting eyewitnesses for a story, peo-ple tend to get very confused so they tell you crazy things, and so I thought those people were wrong. Then more and more people were saying it, and obviously that became what had happened.

I don’t think anyone had really thought, or was processing it, or knew what was hap-

pening. There were radio reports that more planes were headed for the centers. Appar-ently, people were turning their car radios on as they walked by, and people would gather around listening.

People were really scared. It wasn’t a pan-ic, but lots of people were upset like, ‘what’s going on? What’s happening? Our whole city is being attacked.’

ImagesThe most dominant image is one that peo-

ple will never see on TV anymore because it’s so terrible, but I did see people jumping or falling. I did see that. It’s weird; at the time I saw it, you know I was a reporter and I was calling in details and events and I didn’t even call that in because at that very moment I didn’t think that was what I was seeing. I was like ‘that couldn’t be it.’ It was only a couple of days later when I was reading the coverage or I heard about somebody else seeing it that I realized ‘oh my god, I saw that too.’ It was like I almost forgotten it for a couple of days. It’s weird that my most vivid memory is one that I didn’t really register at the moment, be-cause it was just so horrible. That’s one that will always stick with me.

And then I guess maybe another one is as I was making my way toward the Trade Cen-ter site after the first plane crash, I was may-be three blocks away, and there was debris

all over the streets, and shoes everywhere. Lots of debris from the office buildings and bags and briefcases and office kind of stuff, but there were just lots and lots and lots of shoes. I was so confused, I couldn’t figure out where all these shoes were coming from. I think maybe some of them came out of the plane, but for the most part I think a lot of them were women who were wearing high heels or whatever that day; they just either stepped out of their shoes and were so scared that they left them behind and they were run-ning. It was very strange, very powerful, and I will always remember that.

ReportingAt that moment I really wasn’t scared be-

cause I was sort of being governed by that adrenalin; adrenalin was going through me and I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew I had work to do. I knew the way the AP worked, which was where I was working at the time, that, when something big was happening in some part of the world people gathered around computers and they stood there and they read AP’s reports. People re-ally depended on what the AP did, and I was thinking, that’s what my job is right now.

I have to be calm, I have to describe what I was seeing, I have to interview people who saw some things, since I wasn’t here when it all happened. I got there moments later, so I

tried to find eyewitness people. I was going about it in this very methodical way; this is what people depend on the AP for at this very moment.

AP thinks this is important. Everyone worked together and took care of each other. Every press person I saw that day I was really impressed by.

The ImpactI’m not going to be breaking any ground

here, but it has just changed security, and it changed the feeling of security; you know it’s hard to remember a time, but there was a time, when you could walk into an office building in midtown and you didn’t have to have three IDs or you didn’t have to have your badge since you worked there, and there weren’t two security guards.

The other part is related. Any time there’s an incident, whether it’s a manhole fire, or even something you know like a subway rumbling a little too loud, I think a lot of times the collective experience for people is that it’s man-made, it’s a terror something, that it’s not natural — the earthquake, being an example. When we had the earthquake last week everybody that I know that felt it thought it was a bomb or something. I think that’s the biggest way it has changed; people didn’t think like that before. That’s how life is here now.

Sara (Kugler) Frazier, a 1996 West-

side graduate, was a reporter for the

Associated Press (AP) in New York. She

reported from the World Trade

Centers on the day of the Sept. 11,

2001 attacks.

Kalen Karnes, a 1996 West-side Graduate, left for her job at an advertising agency Sept. 11, 2001. She came out of the subway at Grand Central Sta-tion and got steaming coffee at the café on the first floor of the building. Karnes saw on the mounted television in the café that something had hit one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

“[Reporters] thought it was just a small private plane, that could hold only two or three people, that had lost control and crashed,” Karnes said.

Karnes went up to work thinking this event was nothing important. She soon found out that it would completely change her view of the safety of the world.

“I had been working for about half an hour, and someone said that the other building had been hit,” Karnes said. “That’s when we knew something was not right.”

Karnes and co-workers went over to one of the windows where they could clearly see the twin towers; she saw that there was smoke billowing out of both of the buildings. Karnes went

back to her desk.“I worked for about three

more minutes, then the first building fell,” Karnes said. “This was about the time the Penta-gon was hit.”

All of the buildings through-out the city were evacuated. Grand Central Station was one of the important buildings to evacuate because so many peo-ple go in and out of there every day. When Karnes started head-ing out of her building, she was told to walk north, not south – the direction of the World Trade Centers.

“There was about 20 people at each pay phone trying to get a hold of loved ones and friends,” Karnes said. “No one had cell phone reception because the cell tower for the city was on top of a World Trade Center tower.”

Karnes was one of the lucky ones. She was able to contact one of her sisters, Korey, who met up with her and they went to a friend’s apartment to watch the news.

During all of this, she kept re-calling how her boss had acted when the first plane hit.

“She is an Indian woman who is very intelligent,” Karnes said. “She started yelling ‘It’s Osama Bin Laden!’ It fascinates me that she was eventually right.”

Karnes and her sister de-cided to donate blood that day, but they found that many other people had the same idea.

“They didn’t need any [blood],” Karnes said. “The only type that the hospital needed was Type O, which is the rarest, but they didn’t need anything else because there were no sur-vivors.”

Karnes remembers how for weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center, people still needed to wear masks over their faces to protect themselves from the dust.

“I probably should have been wearing a mask too,” Karnes said, with a nervous laugh.

The recent earthquake in New York forced her to remember the day of Sept. 11 as all the hor-ror resurfaced.

“It’s so real to me I think it could happen again,” Karnes said. “The threat and fear is a normal thing in the city now.”

Even though this is how life is for Karnes in New York now, she doesn’t think anywhere else is any safer.

“Nowhere is as safe as it was 10 years ago,” Karnes said. “I have grown to love the city more, and [the attacks] made people come together here more than ever.”

While watching the New York City news on Sept. 11 2001, Westside graduate Courtney Smith saw cover-age of the first attack on the World Trade Center.

Shocked, Smith ran from her apartment down to the street filled with people and stopped cars. From her location, Smith was just a few blocks from the World Trade Center. She was looking straight at the Twin Towers when the second plane hit.

“I was horrified,” Smith said. “Be-cause at that point you knew that it wasn’t some [accident]. There was a moment there, after the first plane hit, that maybe you thought the pi-lot had lost control. But when the second plane hit is when I got really terrified.”

Not knowing what else to do, Smith continued to her job at a pub-lic relations firm and spent the day watching the news and trying to get through to her family in Nebraska on the phone.

“I spent a lot of that day call-ing loved ones and getting in touch to tell what was happening,” Smith said. “My family was really worried.”

As the tragedy sunk in, New York became a different place. People were more conscious.

“It just got worse and worse,” Smith said. “It was a very somber time.”

The 9/11 attacks changed Smith’s life as well.

“I was fortunate not to have any-one immediately affected [by the at-tacks],” Smith said. “It was the first time my eyes were open and a spirit was instilled in me.”

By Kennedy GrzesiakSTAFF WRITER

By Sam SalvatoriIN-DEPTH EDITOR

Westside graduate Sara Frazier, at the top of the World Trade Center 7, the first tower to be completed since Sept. 11, 2001. Photos courtesy of Sara Frazier

10th anniversary

KALEN KARNESUnity arises from harmful attacks

Courtney Smith noticestragedy still affects N.Y. spirit

Photo courtesy of C

ourtney Sm

ith

feature September 9, 2011 l 7

Laura Gilinsky asked her mom on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, “Is that the two hospitals with the bridge in between?”

These were the only twin buildings in New York that Gilinsky knew of at the time. She was baffled by the fear and worry she saw on her parent’s faces.

“My mom said, ‘no honey, that’s where Un-cle Mike works,’” said Gilinsky, now a senior. “I didn’t even know he worked in the city, be-cause he lived in Jersey.”

Gilinsky’s uncle died on about the 100th floor of the World Trade Center, and the real-ity of his death devastated her entire family.

“A month and seven days before Sept. 11, my baby cousin, Jack, was born. It puzzled me to think that he would grow up without knowing his dad,” Gilinsky said.

In the first few years after the attacks, Gil-insky’s family traveled to Jersey for a memo-rial service.

“The memorial site was a bell tower that was made out of the World Trade Center de-bris,” Gilinsky said. “My aunt and cousins would go light a candle for my uncle. It was a beautiful service.”

Gilinsky’s family no longer attends the ser-vice each year. Instead, they go about the day a little more normally, while still mourning it. Gilinsky’s family doesn’t let the death of her uncle change how they view Muslims.

“My family is very open,” Gilinsky said. “We completely understand that it is not the ethnicity of the group, it is a certain group.”

* * *

He’s driving down the road, tires spin-ning up dust, when his truck explodes into tiny pieces of scrap metal. The truck behind his is also hit, and it too is blown into pieces. Though the trucks are destroyed, everyone lives.

This was one of social studies instructor Nathan Bramley’s experiences in the Army Reserves while deployed in Iraq. Bramley joined the Reserves after Sept. 11, 2001.

“It ispired me to join,” Bramley said. “It made me feel good to serve my country.”

The attacks on the World Trade Center changed Bramley’s perspective on safety. He remembers being in high school and taking time out of class to watch the media coverage.

“It has had a lasting impact on everyone,”

Bramley said. “There are still soldiers in Iraq.”

* * *

Senior Gracie Ehlers opposes the war in Iraq because of the devastation it has caused.

“I’m not a big supporter of the war, or any war that goes on,” Ehlers said.

Gracie can hardly remember the day that propelled the United States into war.

“I was in first grade,” Ehlers said. “Halfway through the day my teacher turned on the television and told everyone to be quiet.”

Ehlers and all of the other children in her class didn’t fully understand what was going on just by watching what was shown on the TV.

“I came home and my mom told me that the two buildings had blown up and a lot of people died,” Ehlers said. “That was when I started to understand a little bit what hap-pened.”

Ehlers believes that a particular group of people shouldn’t be blamed for the grief and terror caused by this event.

“I think it’s important for people to under-stand what terrorism is,” Ehlers said. “I think that awareness is the most important step, not just the violence aspect of it.”

* * *

He doesn’t look like everyone else. He gets singled out constantly and is approached with degrading attitudes. People don’t know who he is, yet they judge him.

This is the experience of sophomore Samir Thariani, who is Muslim. He is treated dif-ferently because of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

“People are really racist now and really rude,” Thariani said.

He can’t walk around normally without re-ceiving this response to his skin color.

“I avoid gas stations in the south,” Thariani said. “ This is where it is the worst.”

Thariani barely remembers Sept. 11, 2001. “I was in kindergarten, and they turned on

the TV and we watched the videos that were being shown,” Thariani said.

Like most children, Thariani didn’t quite understand what was going on, but now he does. He doesn’t appreciate that people are still racist towards him.

* * *

She walks into the room. The TV is set to the usual morning news channel, but the things televised are not events in a country thousands of miles away. It is destruction and terror in her homeland, the United States.

“My parents were freaking out,” senior Darshana Panchal said. “I just remember watching the TV and seeing the explosion.”

Panchal only faintly remembers Sept. 11. This doesn’t keep her from understanding how it changed relations between the United States and other countries.

“This has rehatched a lot of the racial is-sues,” Panchal said. “I think it’s unfortunate that because of this happening we’re fearful of people who are of a different religion.”

* * *

The sky was clear blue and planes were cir-cling. There was one thought in social studies instructor Susan Fogarty’s mind: “Have any of those planes been hijacked?”

Fogarty was living in Washington D.C. during the attacks Sept. 11. After seeing a news segment reporting the first attack, she saw the second attack live on television.

“My heart nearly leaped out of my chest,” Fogarty said. “When I called family and friends, nobody else knew yet.”

Less than an hour later, another terrorist-controlled plane crashed into the Pentagon.

“It changed my sense of security,” Fogarty said. “It was really the first time in my life that I felt a strong sense of nationalism.”

Later that night, residents of Washington D.C. congregated to sing, light candles and mourn together.

“[It was] cool to see all those people com-ing together to honor all those who had lost their lives,” Fogarty said.

Fogarty tells her story to her students ev-ery year.

“I want students to know my personal con-nection to [Sept. 11] so they understand the importance,” Fogarty said.

* * *

Junior Erin Hodges was happy Sept. 11, 2001. It was her sixth birthday and she was a first

grader at Brownell-Talbot Lower School.“I had brought cupcakes to school,” Hodg-

es said. Shortly after school started, teachers and

parents were notified about the terrorist at-tacks on the Twin Towers and students were released from school.

“I didn’t really know what was going on, but I knew that President Bush had come to Omaha and something bad had happened,” Hodges said.

Every year on Sept. 11, 2001 it is just an-other birthday to her.

“It’s unusual to me,” Hodges said. “I am always excited on Sept. 11 and others are al-ways sad about it.”

* * *

Jokes and generalizations. Especially about the veil.

Senior Shereen Salfity doesn’t wear a veil and sometimes her friends don’t realize her ethnicity, but she is still disappointed by the stigma many Americans attached to the Mid-dle East after 9/11.

Salfity’s mom was born in Lebanon and her dad in Jordan. She said she visits Jordan nearly every other year.

“We’re still very connected,” Salfity said. “I’m not fully Americanized yet.”

Which means Salfity, more than anybody, understands the dynamic of the Middle East. She described Jordan as a country that has radical anti-American citizens, but one that is also home to more moderate thinkers.

After spending the day at school Sept. 11, 2001, Salfity came home to find her mother near tears. The television flashed images of President Bush.

“Even as a young child, I knew this was something to be taken very seriously,” Salf-ity said. “It was extremely traumatic for our country.”

She said this day marks the most impor-tant event for her generation in terms of con-sequences, especially the chasm that has aris-en between the American and Arab worlds.

Despite the labels Arabs have received, she said the high school refuses to use those ste-reotypes.

“I feel like Westside is a really mature en-vironment compared to, especially, other schools,” Salfity said.

Reflections on historic dayStudents, faculty remember

9 11

with stories by STAFF WRITER Kennedy Grzesiak, IN-DEPTH EDITOR Sam Salvatori and EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Ali Tomek

10th anniversaryP

hotos courtesy of Susan Fogarty and E

rin Fogarty-Ow

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