Eleven years and one day ago, the United States suffered the first attack on its soil from an outside force since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.
On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 hijackers took control of four planes. They crashed two of them into the World Trade Center towers in New York, another into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and another was headed for what many believe to be the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers took the plane back from the hijackers.
The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in all, including the 246 passengers on the hijacked planes and the hijackers themselves.
More than 10 years later, Ellettsville residents still remember where they were when they found out about the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. They still remember the fear and anxiety the nation felt in the months following. And they still remember, for better or for worse, the government’s response to the crisis.
Kevin Daly, 52, a New Jersey native, said he was flying when it happened.
“I was in the air,” he said. “I was flying and they landed us in New Jersey. It was six hours before we knew anything. We were stuck there for 48 hours. We couldn’t take off until everything was squared away.”
He went on to say that America has changed since that day.
“You know as well as I do how it has affected our country,” he said. “I mean with all this homeland security. I think it does infringe on Americans’ rights to a point. It hasn’t affected me in a good way. I don’t even want to remember it happened. I’m from Jersey and I used to work out of JFK. It just hit home.”
Kelsey Wagoner, 24, was in class at her middle school in Martinsville, Indiana.
“When the actual attack was happening, I was in the eighth grade in my orchestra classroom,” she said. “I called my mom to let her know that after-school classes had been canceled, and she told me what happened.”
Wagoner said the attack forced her to consider events outside of her own community.
“I feel it made me more aware of international goings-on,” she said. “I was sort of at an age where I was just starting to become more socially and politically aware of what was going on in my own community and in my country and having that outside force sort of forced me to expand those parameters.”
Shawn Meadows, 45, said she was at work in town when 9/11 hit the news.
“All we had was one of those little bitty TVs with rabbit ears, so we were trying to watch it between all the snow,” she said. “We ended up shutting down the office, and I remember not being able to get to my son fast enough at daycare.”
She said Americans were fundamentally changed.
“I guess we just don’t take anything for granted anymore,” she explained. “You know, we’re cautious, and you just appreciate what you have and what you could lose.”
Kristi Huber, 40, like many Americans, was at home.
“I was at home that morning, and I happened to turn on the TV right after it happened,” she said. “Still weird that I happened to turn on the TV right then.”
Huber said feelings in the Midwest 11 years later might not have persisted as long as feelings in New York.
“We all really honor the people who are gone, but it’s different having happened in a city far away,” she noted. “At the time, everybody was on board and everybody was loving New York and feeling for them. Eleven years later, it’s like, had it happened in Bloomington, then we would drive past that every day like New Yorkers do. But we don’t. And so, as people in the Midwest, we do forget in a way. We do heal better than people who actually experienced it. As most people, I hate everything that has come from it. Because there was one terrorist event, our civil rights have been changed forever.”
Since Sept. 11, 2001, at least 6,462 Americans have lost their lives to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Originally published in Ellettsville Journal, 2012. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.