66 thoughts on “Blog #97 – 9/11/01 Oral Interviews”

1. Jordan Shefman May 18, 2017 at 9:55 pm

   Amy Shefman.
   Mother.
   32 at the time of the attack.

   What is your first memory and what conclusions did you come to?
   I was in the car with you on the way to Marshbank Park. You were only five years old. I heard it on the radio and remember thinking “WHAT?!” I was in disbelief. The first plane was obviously an accident- someone just flying too low. The second one, I knew, was definitely terrorism and I was panicked because my sister lived on the East Side. I couldn’t reach her because all the circuits were busy. Nor I or my parents could get ahold of her for a while and we were really scared.

   How did living in New York affect your reaction?
   It didn’t hit me as hard until the buildings came down. I knew how close everything was there and that there would be a panic. I was scared not only for the city, but what else could happen. Even though we were removed here, I felt very connected to it, being a former New Yorker. (Starts crying) I fell into a sort of depression because I wondered what was happening to the world that I just brought a five-month-old baby into. But, I also loved how New Yorkers all came together and I felt that I was part of that.

   Did you know anyone in the cities? If so, did you try to contact them to see if they were OK? What was the conversation like?

   Sister: I remember we were both crying, but I was so relieved to talk to her. It was really scary for us because her brother in law worked in the building next to the twin towers. He was legally blind (only sees with peripheral vision) and he had to run 40 blocks to get home.

   What did you think of Bush’s address later that night?
   I liked what he did, that it was more of a rallying speech, rather than an “Oh let’s be sad about what just happened to us” type of speech. I felt better about the situation and America after hearing what he had to say.

   How do you think America has changed since the attack?
   New Yorkers specifically are prouder than ever of their city, in the way that the first responders reacted. But, I also feel that people are way more suspicious. Muslims, in general, are often unfairly targeted and people are bigoted towards them. And then in general, a lot of people are proud to be Americans and I would assume that the military enrollments have gone up because people are showing their pride in their country. I think there’s pride, suspicion, and fear. I think that there’s all of that wrapped into one. This is as important as when JFK was shot. People always ask “Where were you when JFK got shot” but for me, this is that for me. I will always remember that.

   Before this interview, I knew what kind of effects this attack had had on the country, but this was really the first time hearing a first-hand story in that much detail. It was kind of eye-opening to me to hear about a story of someone who had not only a sister that worked in the city, but whose brother in law worked in one of the smaller World Trade Centers, was legally blind, and made it home after running 40 blocks. My favorite part, however, was when my mom compared 9/11 to JFK being shot. I had never heard that comparison before and thought it was very interesting how she related two crucial events in American history.
2. Rayyan Mahmood May 19, 2017 at 4:32 pm

   Sviatlana Razumnik, mother.

   2. My mom was watching TV and flipping through the channels when she heard about the attacks. She was very convinced that the first plane was a terrorist attack upon hearing about it. She immediately drew parallels between this and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, which was hijacked in 1996. As a former Soviet citizen, she was convinced that this was an act by Afghan insurgents. After the USSR withdrew troops from Afghanistan, it was only a matter of time before the jihadists congregated and struck a major target in the free world-and what bigger target than the US herself?

   3. My mom was living in an apartment in Royal Oak during the attack. My dad and our neighbors were convinced that my mom was just in an instance of classic Soviet paranoia, and that the first plane that hit the WTC was just an accident. They blew it off as a mishap that would be quickly corrected.

   4. My mom and dad lived in New York for a few years before I was born. They moved to Michigan in 2000. It was very disturbing to imagine the WTC after the 9/11 attacks, a building that my mom would normally wake up to, as a heaping pile of smoke and rubble. My mom was very thankful that she had moved out of the city before the attacks, and she was also thankful that I was born here.

   11. My mom appreciated Bush’s speech as a quick way of unifying the nation, but she also was skeptical. She was convinced that Bush lives in the naive bubble of optimism that Gorbachev enjoyed, and that neither the Soviets nor the US could fully eradicate jihadism or even manage a successful invasion of Afghanistan.

   12. After 9/11, my mom’s life became a lot quieter. People around the apartment talked less. No one had lost a family member, but everyone seemed distant from each other. My dad was good friends with the guy who mowed the apartment’s lawn, but after 9/11, they just barely glanced at each other as my dad left for work.

   My own question: How did you think America would respond?
   My mom was scared of a war in Afghanistan for both internal and external reasons. Coming from the USSR under Brezhnev and Gorbachev, she recalls the crowds of protesters against the war in Afghanistan and the masses of families huddled around radios and government offices as KGB officers read off the list of casualties. My mom was scared that opposition to US intervention would create an unstable environment for me to live in. She was also worried that the US would end up embarrassing itself in front of the entire globe, and that a victory against the US would give Al-Qaeda the strength to launch even more terrorist attacks.

   Reflection:
   Before this interview, I knew a lot about the aftermath of 9/11, but I never considered the Soviet point of view. I can’t really sympathize with my mom on this topic, even though I want to. One of the reasons why she moved to the US was to escape the degrading social climate in the USSR as Soviet casualties divided the age-old military bureaucracy and the people, and I feel bad that she had to risk going through all of it again. I suppose history repeats itself, but I never expected it to repeat so quickly. Still, the interview prompted me to do a lot of research, and I ended up drawing a lot of comparisons between US and Soviet foreign policy.
3. Riley Montgomery May 20, 2017 at 12:28 pm

   Paula Montgomery
   My mom

   What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
   My 1st memory was watching Good Morning America with my infant Riley. We were doing our morning routine to visit my aunt and uncle. Matt Lauer had a very concerned look and went to commercial and he announced a plane had hit the tower and that he didn’t have any details. The newscasters were trying to continue with regular program, but 5 mins later they had video of what was happening. Matt Lauer said it wasn’t very uncommon for planes to hit the skyscrapers, but not an airliner, but still no one thought it was terrorism.I was listening to the radio when a second plane hit and they knew it was on purpose. We continued with our morning plans, but glued to our radios. It struck me what a clear day it was and that there were absolutely no planes in the sky. When I got to my aunt and uncles the towers were falling.So we stayed and watched and tried to figure out was going on. Businesses were closing and people were asked to go home, so I went home. All the ladies in the neighborhood were congregated outside. The people with older kids picked them up from school. There was a feeling of panic, people didn’t know if bombing would happen, or another world war. Having worked with Ford Historical activities during WW2 I knew how important Detroit was for building war vehicles and bombs, I knew we would be targeted.Everyone came home from work and stayed inside their homes and watched TV.

   Have you ever been to New York City or Washington D.C.? If so, how did that affect your reactions to the attacks? If not, how did the attacks alter / change your views of the cities and their inhabitants?
   I had been to Washington DC. That the white house and pentagon were being targeted was very scary, our government capital and our financial capital. It had only been a year since i had worked on a very detailed historical project regarding Ford’s activities during WW2 and I knew what kind of destruction was possible and the role of industry in a war.

   How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?
   I just felt very vulnerable. The security of the peace that the US had enjoyed since WW2 was being threatened.

   What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
   At first, it was a lot of informing people what was happening, but it became excessive and constant, it was all that was on for a week. I got irritated because in the beginning, people like Oprah were trying to be helpful and consoling but then it got whiny and America looked very weak as a country. The first show was fine, but then there was a week of it.

   What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night?
   I think he did a decent job under the circumstances. He was at a school at the time and kept his calm. He proved that he could be presidential and gained respect after this. You could tell he was shaken by the loss of American life, but still remained strong.

   Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?
   We are far more security conscience, for obvious reasons and I thinks it made us globally aware. I don’t know how much of it was 9/11 and how much of it was the internet that made us more globally aware.

   I had heard vague stories of 9/11 but never sat down and heard an in-depth account before. I did know before to what extent 9/11 changed our nation and that was all that was talked about for over a week. I did not know to what extent the media covered the attacks and agree with my mom that it must’ve made our country look weak. I don’t think America should’ve let other nations see our country so shaken across the internet. I think it’s especially sad that so many dies going in after the first crash to save others, but then suffering from the second attack. As I was less than a year old, I do not remember my experience myself but apparently my mom was on her way to her aunt’s house with me.
4. Emily Brown May 20, 2017 at 1:53 pm

   1. Lisa Brown. Mother. 40 at the time of the 9/11 attacks

   2. & 3. My first memory was that I was with you at a park and you were only 3 weeks old. My first reaction was disbelief, thinking did this really happen, did terrorists really fly planes into buildings on American soil. I didn’t see the news when it happened so I just felt that it was unbelievable. I felt horror at the loss or life, the enormity and brazenness of the attack, and the possible ramifications of the attack. All I could think of was what kind of world did I bring you into; this was very unsettling. No one was really around me at the park because I was just pushing you around in a stroller. Someone, I think it was your grandma, called me and told me the news. I called dad and asked him what happened. He came to the park to comfort me since I was really nervous. Dad had similar reaction that I had.

   4. Yes, I’ve been to New York and I worked for congress for 8 years in the House of Reps and the Senate, so I know D.C. very well. I just knew that it was something very big that affected our government. I didn’t know if the terrorists were going to take over the government. You don’t really think things will be taken over right away because we have such a strong military, but what if? It was unprecedented. The initial concern was for the people in the buildings. The second concern was that we didn’t know what it meant for our own safety even on the opposite side of the country. But, we all banded together as Americans and felt a sense of nationalism.

   5. I didn’t know anyone in the buildings. The only people we knew who were in New York were Aunt Roberta and her husband so we may have checked on them.

   8. My most vivid memory was holding you in my arms in a new park. I was just so unsettled and shocked. The biggest image I see in my head is the planes going into the towers and the cloud of smoke coming out. But, I was just holding you and I sat on a bench and called Dad.

   9. My sense of security was undermined, but day to day went on as just before because we were so far away from it. We weren’t really affected because we didn’t know anyone who died.

   10. I didn’t even want to have the TV on because I didn’t want you to see the images or hear the sounds of the planes hitting the towers. I made dad either turn the TV down or turn it off. I tried to shelter you from it all.

   13. Things have changed because getting through an airport is a major to-do. People look at Muslims differently and were afraid and distrusted the people who had some hijab or turban on their head. Even though I’m a liberal and love all groups of people, it made me very weary and less trusting. I might have given some Muslim on a plane a second look because the attack less trusting and even since then there have been terrorist attacks all over the world with the same or similar groups so it makes me question the teachings of the faith. Why aren’t more moderate Muslims aren’t standing up against terrorism if that’s not what the religion about. I don’t think the way to settle anything is through violence. We need more understanding of each other. I care about what makes terrorists or groups of feel so angry and violent. Maybe they need more opportunity to not feel alienated. Maybe there is a way to reach out so people don’t act so harshly.

   My reaction to the interview was sad. I feel saddened for the country that we endured such a horrible attack. I got to hear an actual perspective from someone who was an adult at the time (because I was 3 weeks old) who understood what happened. I understand the feelings that my mom felt on 9/11 because I have a similar feeling of fear and disbelief when I hear about a terrorist attack at home, such as the Boston marathon bombing, or even outside of the country. It is an awful thing to have a terrorist attack happen. I can’t even begin to think if I knew someone in the towers or myself, if I had been older and in the towers, or even be on the plane. It is just too upsetting and terrifying.
5. Emma Marszalek May 20, 2017 at 2:13 pm

   Q:What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
   A: Jennifer Marszalek. 31.

   Q:What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
   A: I was watching blue’s clues with you, Kate, and Adam when your grandmother called. She told me to turn on the news. When I did I saw that the first plane had hit. I did think it was an accident at first, but when the second plane crashed I knew that it was a terrorist attack.

   Q:Have you ever been to New York City or Washington D.C.? If so, how did that affect your reactions to the attacks? If not, how did the attacks alter / change your views of the cities and their inhabitants?
   A:Yes, but I didn’t go to New York until after, and a kid when at DC. To me it didn’t just affect just those cities, but it affected everything. It affected traveling that most. It changed how the airport ran, and traveling became scary. Adam went the next week to travel to Disney, and I was terrified.

   Q:What were other peoples’ reactions like in the days after the attacks?
   A: Everyone was in shock. Things became quiet and sad. I would go to the grocery store, and nobody looked at each other, and everything seemed to be at a stand still.

   Q:There has been many other terrorists attacks on America. How do you think our view has changed since 9/11?
   A: Nothing can compare to 9/11. We will never become accustomed to them. It has become a part of our life. You can hide and be scared, but then terrorists win. We have to move on, and be stronger than the fear.

   Q:. How does Oklahoma city compare?
   A: The difference is that it was an American that did that, and they caught him. It horrible and tragic, but it felt that it was a one time thing. 9/11 was foreign that attacked us on our soil. There hadn’t been war in America since civil war.

   Q:What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
   A:All they ever talked about was the attacks. News was on 24/7. It got to the point where it was too much, and I had to turn it off. There is only so much sadness and terror that you can live with. The news showed things that they don’t show today.

   Personal Reflection
   I have always learned about 9/11 from a teacher or videos online, but learning it from somebody’s point of view is interesting. I t feels a lot more real knowing what my mother went through during that time. I never knew what America was like before 9/11, and to hear all of the things that changed is crazy. Things such as the airport security has always been the same, and I couldn’t think of things any differently. I found it interesting that everything got quiet, and how nobody really knew react. I agree with that there is so much sadness that you can live with, and you have to move on. But you can never forget. This interview made 9/11 more real for me. I was alive, but only a few months old. I can’t wrap my head around that everything changed that day, and that nothing would ever be the same.
6. Ethan P May 21, 2017 at 10:46 am

   I am interviewing my dad, Robert Podolsky, about the attacks.

   Q: Where were you during the attacks, and how did you hear about the attacks? What was your initial reaction?

   A: I was going to teach. We were in Flint. I was having to teach this bio-statistics lab, which was having to teach how to use a computer. I was getting ready for class, and went into the biology office, and one of the other faculty said that a plane flew into the World Trade Center. My first reaction was that it was a little plane, because there was a news report recently about a small plane crashing into a building for some reason. So I went off to class, and during the class, I started figuring out what was happening, and I just wanted to continue with class because we didn’t know exactly what was happening. So after class, I found out about the second airplane, and then it was clear it wasn’t an accident (my class was from 9-10 in the morning, so I didn’t know about the pentagon or the second tower getting hit until after class).

   Q: Had you been to New York or Washington, D.C. before the attacks? Have you been since the attacks? Has it affected your view of the cities and/or the attacks?

   A: I had been to D.C. before… and New York too, I think. I have been to both since; you were with me on our vacation to New York, and we stopped in D.C., remember? The attacks haven’t changed my view of the cities at all. When we went to the cities, we didn’t go to any monuments at all. Whenever I visit those cities, I don’t really connect them with 9/11 at all.

   Q: Did you get stranded in Flint because of the attacks?

   A: I didn’t, but the chair of the department I was going to (I got the job in Georgia) was stuck because of the attacks.

   Q: How do you remember the media coverage of the attacks?

   A: On 9/11, there was nothing but media coverage about it. What I remember about the media coverage was that they didn’t have anything to say, but they kept there because it was such a traumatic event. It amazed me that the next day the media coverage was still going just as strong, if not stronger, than it had during the actual attacks. I just remember that everything was unbearably repetitive. I remember that the media broadcast a speech of Bush with a speakerphone on a pile of rubble saying stuff like “We’ll find out who did this, and they’re gonna pay!”

   Q: What do you think about George W. Bush’s leadership during the attacks and directly proceeding the attacks? Do you remember his address later that night? What was your reaction?

   A: So what I remember about his leadership was that it was like he was caught with his pants down. He didn’t know what to do, and if you watch the video of him getting the news in the classroom, you can see that he was really worried and trying to add two and two together. He also didn’t take the intelligence community seriously when they said Al Qaeda was dangerous, so this shouldn’t have surprised him as much as it did. Could he have prevented it, no, but he had the tools necessary to know that something fishy was going to happen. I don’t remember his speech too well.

   (I show him the speech)

   A: I would have viewed it positively, and after seeing that, I think it was positive. I think he did a good job holding together the basic principles of what we call American.

   I wasn’t really surprised by my dad’s response to the questions. Seeing as I have lived with him for sixteen years, I have talked to him numerous times about the attacks, so these were answers that I am used to hearing all the time. Also, I know his general political position and as such, I can predict how he is going to respond to events and/or questions about events. His response to Bush’s speech, however, did surprise me because my dad is normally critical of how Bush handled 9/11 (especially considering the “pointless” wars we went into to try to avenge the people who died during 9/11). Normally, he goes on a rant about how Bush shouldn’t have been surprised by the attacks (which you saw in the interview) and that he should have been more attentive to the dangers that Al Qaeda posed, which you saw in the interview, but him having a positive response to Bush’s speech was really weird.
7. Kate Marszalek May 21, 2017 at 3:04 pm

   Stephan Marszalek
   Father
   30 at the time of the attack
   1) What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of
   conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
   Answer: I was at work and I think somebody had said that there was an accident in New York. At first we thought it was an accident. As the news progressed, we realized that it was more intentional. We had never seen such a large scale act of violence before, and it really didn’t happen in the U.S.

   2) Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?
   Answer: Watching it on a grainy black and white television, then making the effort to come home to my family. The sheer magnitude of the disaster was too hard to think about.
   3) What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night?
   Answer: I don’t remember the address that well. But like any President, I thought that he tried to calm and build and hold people accountable.

   4) How did life change for you and your family in the weeks and months after 9/11?
   Answer: It really didn’t change. But it was something that was concerning. My son was on a flight to Florida only a few days after once planes were able to fly again, and it was terrifying. Not knowing if another attack was going to happen.

   5) How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?
   Answer: You really became aware of being in large places and big crowds. After 9/11, we were at Michigan Stadium, and they were actually warning people to stay away from large crowds, and they announced that attendance. When it was called, you could actually here a groan from the crowd, here we were in a large open space with a large amount of people. The unknown was terrifying.

   6) Did you ever think that we, America, could be a giant target for such an attack?
   Excluding Pearl Harbor. Do you think we will see another terrorist attack like this in your lifetime?
   Answer: No it never crossed my mind, all the other attacks were little compared to this and never really happened at such a large scale. I never thought it was possible to be such a target. I believe that, sadly, we may see another large scale attack like this in my lifetime.

   7) How did 9/11 change your thought process while flying or traveling?
   Answer: I don’t get on an airplane and it doesn’t cross my mind, I think about it every single time. I don’t let it stop me. But I think about it every single time. There is a culture today that thinks that everyone on a plane is suspicious.

   My Response: Though I was alive at the time of the attacks, I was too young to remember what actually happened. While interview my dad, I realized the full impact that the attack had on everyone. Not just those who were directly affected through a family member or friend that was a victim. I have always known the world that 9/11 caused, but this interview made me see how it has changed. That the world was different before the attacks. This interview has made me think, what would happen if another attack came? Would we, as a nation, be able to pick ourselves up again? Or would we crumble? My clearest memories of the effects of the attack were on the day, 9/11, throughout elementary school when we would respect those who fell victim. I saw the fear and sadness in my teacher’s eyes, and continue to see it in the adults around me on the day of remembrance.
8. Emily Juriga May 21, 2017 at 3:13 pm

   Interviewer: Emily Juriga
   Interviewee: Jim Juriga, my Dad
   Age of Interviewee on day of attack: 40 y/o
   Location during attack: Manufacturing facility of San Luis Rassini, in Piedras Negras, Mexico.
   Emily: What was your reaction to the attack?
   Jim: Disbelief. After the second plane hit I was just in shock. The attack was chilling, and no one knew what was going to happen next.
   Emily: What were other peoples’ reactions to the attack?
   Jim: Well, the Engineering department, where I was working, was directly over a cafeteria, and they had televisions mounted throughout the cafeteria. People came running up when the first plane hit and said “You have to come see this, an airplane just hit the World Trade Center”. We were all thinking it was just an accident, so we complete the meeting we were having and I walk on down to that cafeteria, and I got there just in time to see plane #2 hit. That was no accident. I’m getting goose bumps just talking about it. Everyone was just looking at each other, amazed. People everywhere were on their phones calling others, and people were running around panicking.
   Emily: What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings? What happened to you after the attack?
   Jim: We knew something evil was happening, so we were all glued to the TV, watching it until the first building collapse. The phones were ringing off the hook, and about 15 minutes after the South Tower collapsed, an emergency management meeting was held to try and figure out what this attack meant to us and what is going to happen to the business. Then my telephone rang, it was my boss from the office in Detroit, and he said “what are you doing right now?”. Well I said, “I’m in a management meeting talking about how we are going to react to this and what the business implications are.” But he literally said, “Drop everything, and get the hell out of Mexico”. So I turned everything off, packed my bags and headed toward the bridge to get back into Texas before the borders closed down. There was a huge line of expatriate Americans bailing out of Mexico, and because I used to live in Texas with a bunch of border patrol neighbors, a border patrollers of that border knew me and got me out of the 3 hour line I was in and got me across in 5 minutes. Now, I don’t remember much of what happened after getting across the border, it was a blur to be honest.
   Emily: What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
   Jim: All I remember about the media coverage was the live coverage of the second plane hitting, and everyone being in shock. And immediately following the attacks I remember having so many questions, like who was involved, where are they going to attack next? This was also the first time ever in my life that the word “Terrorist” meant more than one person, and the fact that this was done by a group of people going after America was new.
   Emily: How did the company you were with react to the attack?
   Jim: After the attack, I wondered how they were [his company] going to fly me back and forth from Michigan to Piedras Negras in the after math of this attack so I could keep working? So I drove to Michigan and we had a business meeting to talk about that exact subject. The discussion then was what is going to happen to our company and the auto industry if there is an attack in Detroit, or in our headquarters? It would cripple the auto industry. I think everyone was planning and thinking about what may happen if an event this catastrophic occurred again on American soil, and was planning on how to react and what procedure to follow if it did.

   Hearing about my Dad’s story and about what he did on that day was very interesting. I could not believe that he did not leave Mexico the minute the second plane hit, I had assumed he would want to get back to the States as soon as possible. I was also surprised that he managed to get out of Mexico so quickly with the help of his border patrol connections. To be in a different country while your country is being attack must have been scary for my dad, especially because he was away from my brother, my mom and I. But I feel very fortunate that I didn’t lose any family or friends in the attack, and that my dad was able to make it home safely.
9. Rachel Stansberry May 21, 2017 at 3:25 pm

   What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
   Joanne Stansberry (mother).  35.

   Where were you when the attacks happened?
   I was at work, Downtown Detroit at the Renaissance Center.  Your dad called (he was home with you and Jay) and called to say that a small plane ran into a building in NYC.

   How were other people around you reacting?
   I told a couple people and we went into a conference room to turn on the news.  A couple minutes later the second tower was hit and the newscaster said “we were under attack”.  We knew then it was not an accident.

   Did you know anyone in the cities? If so, did you try to contact them to see if they were o.k.?  What was the conversation like?
   I did not, but my co-worker did and he immediately started making phone calls.

   What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings? Why?
   Disbelief.  We all just looked at each other and watched.  I left about 5 minutes after the second attack.  Some people waited until they were told to leave – I was already on my way by then.  I just wanted to get home to my family.

   Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?
   Thinking about the people on the plane calling home to say goodbye to their families.

   How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?
   In the immediate aftermath, i was on edge, not knowing how it could happen.  Since I worked in the RenCen towers, I found out we were on a watch list (from the US government) that said we could be a target.  I worked from other offices for a couple days.  My friends and I made up our own escape route out of the RenCen.  We didn’t ever think that we needed to use it – but we felt better kidding each other about stairs in heels etc.  Just trying to make everything “Normal”

   Do you think the situation would’ve been much different if you didn’t work in the RenCen? Also do people at work ever mention it?
   I think everybody mostly has the same feeling regardless of where they worked.  Although it didn’t make me feel good knowing that our top leaders did not work in that office building for the month!  It comes up occasionally.  No one does not have a story or remember exactly where they were at the time.

   How do you think America has changed since that day? Better or Worse?
   In many ways I think that America changed for the worse.  Seems to be more people feeling anger that they don’t know how to manage so it makes them react deeper.  Whether it is people displaying anger over Muslims, or it is people displaying anger over people who try to do what they think they need to do to protect is more extreme.  I do believe we as a country have more things in place to keep us safer, but I don’t believe we are totally safe.

   I thought this interview was interesting and made me see more perspectives on this event. I often hear stories from the people in New York, whether it’s from online videos or from the memorial itself. This gave me more of an idea on the average person who didn’t live in New York during the situation. It really does show how this situation made the majority of people in America scared and worried on what was occurring. I often don’t hear about the affects on people afterwards, especially for work. I thought it was interesting how my mom had to work in other places, and how some people didn’t show up for a week later. It also showed how people were even cautious after the event incase it wasn’t truly over yet. I overall thought this was  a good experience.
10. Alex Hidalgo May 21, 2017 at 3:40 pm

    Name: Ellen Hidalgo

    Age at time of attack: 33

    Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?

    I was at home in the family room watching the news. You were only a few weeks old at the time. I remember calling your father who was at work and he didn’t believe me. He thought I was making it up! When I was on the line with him someone came into his office and told him to come look at the TV. I also called my mom and my sister. The overall feeling from everyone I talked to was that of disbelief and fear. We all were wondering if any other attacks were coming.

    Did you know anyone in the cities? If so, did you try to contact them to see if they were o.k.? What was the conversation like?

    Uncle Rich actually worked in New York City. He worked in the financial district down there, but not in the World Trade Center. Oddly enough he missed his train going down to the city that day. Aunt Marisa was on the phone with me and she was really scared. She hadn’t heard from Rich all day. I just remember Marisa freaking out waiting to hear from him.

    How did life change for you and your family in the weeks and months after 9/11?

    I remember being more aware and fearful of things to come. Your Aunt Marisa and Uncle Rich actually knew a few people who were killed in the attacks. Marisa had to start taking anxiety medication after the fact for months. A couple months after the attacks your dad and I were flying to New York. The amount of security was kind of shocking to me as there was so much of it. Before the attacks I remember the security being extremely loose.

    What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?

    At the time when I was watching in the morning I had the Today Show on and there was constant news on all day. It was pretty non-stop media for a while. I was watching all day long just to see what was going to happen next. I also remember the controversy over whether or not Bush would take us into war.

    Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since
    that day? Why?

    One thing was definitely higher national security for the U.S. The department of homeland security was created under Bush, which we didn’t have before. That was created to monitor any suspicious activity. They also had an advisory system, which would warn of different alerts. It would advise people when there was an elevated or imminent terrorism threat. Another change is more airport security. I remember showing up to the airport just half an hour before my flights and I would zoom right through security. After the attacks though, the TSA was put in for better security.

    It was really interesting to hear about 9/11 form the perspective of someone who actually lived through it. The fact that my Aunt and Uncle had such a close connection to the attacks was really shocking to me. With members of my family such as my Aunt being so effected by this, it made me realize how real these attacks were and how they impacted the whole nation. When my mom was talking about pre-9/11 airport security I really couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The fact that anybody could waltz into the airport 30 minutes prior to his or her flight and whiz through security is so foreign to me. Overall, I think that this interview gave valuable insight into 9/11, one of the most infamous days in American history.
11. Ben Iverson May 21, 2017 at 4:03 pm

    1. What is your name? How old were you?
    a. Meg and Nathan Iverson, 31 years old

    2. What is your first memory of the attack? What were your first thoughts?
    a. I was sitting at my desk at work and your mother called and told me that a plane hit the twin towers. At first we thought that it was a small plane. I wasn’t watching the news but I was on the phone with your mother when she screamed. The second plane hit. My first thought after the second airplane hit was that we were under attack. I was unsure if it was confined to New York or if it was going to be happening all over the place. Mom: I was watching the news for a long time but then your brother wanted to go outside and play, so that’s what we did. I couldn’t stop thinking about it though.

    3. What were the reactions of others in the office?
    a. One of the kids who worked in the warehouse was furious. He was throwing stuff around and absolutely furious. Everybody else was pretty much somber.

    4. Did you know anybody in New York or DC at the time?
    a. My cousin Jonathan was living in New York. It took the better part of a day trying to find out if he was okay or not but he ended up not being anywhere near it. There were a lot of people trying to contact him, so he was overwhelmed and it was a short conversation.

    5. How did life change for you in the aftermath?
    a. Business slowed down like somebody flipped a switch. The months immediately after 9/11 our business dropped by 25%. I may have had to cancel a business trip because the plans weren’t flying right after the attack. They were down for like four or five days.

    6. What do you remember of the media coverage?
    a. It was non-stop. It was almost entirely focused on ground zeroes. I will never forget the sound of the first responders’ alarms and emergency beacons that were constantly going off. Mom: You weren’t sure what was accurate. They would report things and news would change and then they would recant and come out with new information.

    7. Did you watch the Bush address that night? What did you think of it?
    a. Yes. I thought that he responded properly and was very presidential. You felt like the country was in good hands. Mom: I remember when he was in a school and somebody whispered in his ear and the look on his face – he looked so pissed.

    8. How did life change for your family in the weeks and months after the attack?
    a. As an American I feel like we lost our innocence. That applies to our family as well. It made me nervous about air travel in general and certainly international air travel. It didn’t impact my travel habits but it changed how I felt about travel.

    9. What was your most vivid memory from that day?
    a. The images of the towers falling down and the people falling away from the dust cloud. They were constantly being shown on the news.

    10. How do you think America has changed since that day?
    a. It has forever changed the way Americans view air travel and airport security. I think it has largely made Americans more islamophobic, less tolerant. And in many ways, more patriotic.

    Reflection:
    I have heard the story about my mom and dad being on the phone when the second tower was hit countless times, so I didn’t have a particularly strong reaction to that part of the interview. What was so interesting to me was that the impacts of the attack weren’t confined to New York. The impacts were so widespread. Some of them, like massive changed to air travel security, were to be expected, other, like my dad’s company losing 25% of their business for a few months was shocking. It’s amazing how a few hours can change every aspect of life. It was also interesting to me to see how different people dealt with the attack. My mom watched the news for a while, but then she started playing outside with my brother and me. My dad stayed at the office working. While my parents sought a distraction, others turned to the 24/7 news coverage. Others still felt more intense emotions, like the man working in my dad’s warehouse who went into a fit of rage. Everybody had their own reactions and reasons for them.
12. Rania Abbasi May 21, 2017 at 4:21 pm

    Aisha Abbasi – Mother
    40 years old on 9/11

    1. Where were you on the day of the attack and how did you hear about it?
    In the morning, I was in the office, where I see patients [she’s a psychoanalyst]. I didn’t hear about it until one of my patients came in and said, ‘Have you seen the news? A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.’ We all just thought it was a crash, like an accident. Then my next patient came in and told me 2 more planes had crashed, one into the Pentagon and another into the second World Trade Center building. This is when we knew it must be an attack.

    2. Did you keep working and seeing patients after you heard?
    Yes. I thought it was important that I was there for my patients so that they could talk about it with me, even though I was very terrified myself. Though most of that day, it wasn’t clear to people what had actually happened. We didn’t really have answers, just questions.

    3. What was your first reaction? Did you ever think something like this could happen in America?
    I was shocked and terrified. Horrified. I was also very disturbed to hear that the attackers were Muslim. I felt like I had to think about, my God, we’re Muslim, are we like them? There was a lot of painful thinking that I had to do; given that I had been raised a Muslim, and now these supposed Muslims had caused such destruction. I didn’t think something like this could happen before 9/11, which was an incorrect idea. When we immigrated, we believed we could be safe here and go eat 31 flavors of Baskin Robbins. You know, there won’t be wars. Because when I was a child, I saw 2 wars in Pakistan. I didn’t think there could be wars in America like this–with terrorism.

    4. How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath?
    It changed a lot. I was just terribly saddened by what these Muslim terrorists had done, and I think it was the first time I started questioning, in America, what was being done in the name of Islam. And how could Muslims who professed to be religious cause so much massive destruction. I later became worried about my own safety and the safety of the family; because around that time, people who were Muslims living in homes; their garbage was being dumped in their front yards and all kinds of discriminatory signs were being put up. Many American friends were calling us saying, ‘Are you all okay?’ and thankfully, we were okay. But starting the next day, for me, the life-changing thing was that my patients started talking about what the Muslims had done, and they knew had been born and raised a Muslim. Even though they had some sense that I wasn’t a conservative, practicing Muslim. People I had known for a long time began to seem very scared, even of me. They began to think about what kind of group I come from. For instance, there was a patient who kept ‘forgetting’ to pay her bill every month. When we finally talked about it, she said ‘I meant to bring in the check, but I have a strange thought which is kind of embarrassing–I feel like I don’t want to give you the money because I feel like you and your husband are sending it to Al-Qaeda.’ This was bizarre and also frightening because these were not crazy people, but normal people that just had paranoid ideas about me; even though they’d known me for 9-10 years.

    5. What did you think of how Bush dealt with the situation?
    I liked the way he went and supported the people in that area and supported the grieving families, the firefighters and rescuers. He did a good job with that. But the response soon after, at some point he started talking about the ‘evil of access’ and he identified the Muslim-majority countries which he thought evil was generated against the West. That’s when I began to realize it was becoming divisive with the development of Anti-Muslim rhetoric. The American government soon after had intelligence that showed them that there were these weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and after 9/11 they decided to go into Iraq, as though the two were inter-connected. This didn’t make sense to me because the terrorists from 9/11 were from different parts of the Muslim world, but none of them were from Iraq.

    6. One time you mentioned to me that Bush tried to do something like a Muslim registry after 9/11?
    I think it had been attempted under that government but it was stopped. What we heard in those days was that the American government was reaching out to a lot of Muslims and enlisting some of them to be become kind-of spies for the government. There could be people right here in the mosques or at a dinner party who were actually working for the government. We all became very careful about what we said around our Muslim and Pakistani friends.

    7. How did you keep yourself grounded with all the hate?
    I think I started changing in the sense that it came home to me more clearly; human beings can be very very vicious. And I’d always felt that every human has the power to make people believe certain things and control them into doing acts of destruction in the name of religion. I also began to realize that I, too, have my own prejudices. I think that’s what it helped me do, and I think that there are terrorist parts in all of us.

    8…What do you mean?
    What I mean is that, in a personal way, I had to think about my struggles with my own anger and rage that I used to feel very uncomfortable with. And I realized that I did experience that in an alien and terrorist part of me. But the fact is that any of us, most of us, are capable of great anger and violence at times if we don’t find appropriate ways to express it. But the terrorist part is more than that. It’s not just violence and anger. I think there’s a particular type of ideology that they’re brainwashed into. So I started thinking about, you know, what kind of a Muslim am I? Increasingly, it became clear that I had no interest in being that kind of a Muslim; who believed in dividing the world into black and white/good and bad. I could understand that if I realized I myself am susceptible to prejudice. Like I believe we all have parts of ourselves that, under certain circumstances, get mobilized, and then we think bad things about other groups of people because of our own anxieties.

    9. Now that it’s been around 15 years after the attack, how do you think America has changed since?
    Well, I feel that America has never been the same since 9/11. I feel that America, in a sense, lost its innocence and its sense of invulnerability; which was good in a way because we had all grown up in countries where we had experience with violence and war. The Israelis had too, as had the Palestinians. So the major changes at the airports in terms of security was a big shock because we never used to have that before. You were born the year after, so I had this feeling that you were being born into a world where you had never seen what it was like before all of this. But, I think America has certainly become more vigilant, and I feel that the aspects that have to do with making the country secure are good. But, it has also become more paranoid.

    10. What do you think of the way the country deals with Muslims now?
    Well I think, as a person who travels a lot in other parts of the world, that a lot of the rhetoric Americans hear is misguided, a lot of them are ignorant about the true history of how Al-Qaeda developed. Because those who’ve read the history know that the way it all started was that Afghanistan was attacked by Russia. And Americans took the help of certain Muslim folks called the Mujahideen; fighting against the Russians in Afghanistan. America supported them in order to get Russia out of Afghanistan. Then, when Russia left, America abandoned those people. So they collected under people like Osama Bin Laden who had a war of his own against Saudi Arabia, and had lots of money. So the Mujahideen, which means warriors, turned into Al-Qaeda, and started attacking. So I mean industrialized and powerful countries need to know when they use rebels in other countries to destabilize or overthrow a regime, and they leave the rebels after the purpose is accomplished, then the rebels are going to find some other source of funding to fight some other imaginary enemy–in this case (9/11) it happened to be America.

    11. What do you think about the Islamophobic rhetoric here and in other countries?
    In part I can understand it, if I were not a Muslim and I were told that this is the stuff that they were reading in the Quran, which says “kill the infidels” and things like that, you know. I would think Muslims are a pretty crazy bunch and all of them should be destroyed. But I think that’s extremely ignorant. So I think that right now, partly because of 9/11, what is happening is a lot of hatred that is being created because there are large masses of people that are ignorant. Then, there’s a government that’s feeding that sense of hate. So it’s the worst possible combination.

    12. How do you feel going back to Pakistan [home country] after 9/11 when people think that’s where all the terrorism is?
    The fact is that there is terrorism in Pakistan also. That’s the sad part. But now, terrorism is rampant in the whole world. In the past when I used to go to Pakistan, soon after 9/11, people would say, ‘Oh my God are you going to be safe?’ But now, people know that we are not safe anywhere. But still people think it’s very dangerous in Pakistan. It’s other-ized and not thought of as a country in which people live and work normally with their families. My brothers are there with their children and they’re happy. Some of your friends ask you now, as well, ‘Is it safe to go to Pakistan this summer?’ Well, yeah, it’s a normal country and not all parts of it have terrorist characteristics.

    13. Did you change how you presented yourself in public after 9/11?
    No, not at that time. Bush never said anything specifically hating Muslims. I never thought I’d give him credit for something but I give him credit for not saying anything hateful. I actually became more visible as a Muslim and Pakistani-American in terms of wearing a Shalwar-Kameez [traditional garments]. I wanted to demonstrate that we’re not all terrorists; that most of us are actually secular people and we wear beautiful clothes and that we’re educated, and that we understand the different issues and fears. I actually will admit that there was some hesitation when speaking Urdu [first language] because I didn’t want people to think we were planning something violent on the plane or in public. There was more fear that if we speak in a language that others don’t understand, they might become paranoid and suspect us of something.

    14. To wrap up, how have you changed as a person because of 9/11?
    Well, every circumstance changes us. I can’t say I’m entirely happy about the circumstance, but I certainly have grown from it and learned to talk about differences. I think I have become much more politically aware and proving that I want to protect my rights. That I am a citizen of this country and I’m not going to let somebody take my rights away.

    My personal reaction:

    As someone born after 9/11, I can’t give my opinion of the memories surrounding that time. However, I can empathize with my mother and our family as much as possible. I was very surprised when my mother said there are terrorist parts in all of us. But I think a lot of the things she answered to my questions were interesting, and her psychoanalysis background helps her give a unique take on the situation. Being Muslim and Pakistani-American, I understand what my parents went through; yet I will never fully grasp what it was like during that time.
13. Stav D May 21, 2017 at 4:32 pm

    1. What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    My name is Hagay Dvir and I was 33 on the day of 9/11.
    2. What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
    My first memory of the attacks was watching CNBC live. I remember actually being able to see the towers on the video and they had live coverage of the whole event. When the first plane hit I was sure it was accident. I was watching the TV before going to work and when the first plane hit, I had to keep watching. I didn’t even intend to skip work until the second plane hit, that’s when I figured it was an act of terrorism.
    1. Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?
    I was home when the attacks happened. Everyone was asleep still so I was watching alone.
    1. Have you ever been to New York City or Washington D.C.? If so, how did that affect your reactions to the attacks?  If not, how did the attacks alter / change your views of the cities and their inhabitants?
    I was actually in the twin towers 10 years earlier so I was trying to imagine in my head what it looked like inside and picturing how the same building I was once standing in, was actually falling down to the ground.

    What were other peoples’ reactions like in the days after the attacks?
    The country was scared. The major topic of conversation remained the attacks for days and days and the fear of another major attack was talked about a lot. In the office people weren’t really getting much work done because they were all just talking about it and what we should be doing about it.
    1. Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?
    The most vivid memory I still have is seeing the people jumping off the roof of the second tower moments before it collapsed.
    1. How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?
    It was scarier for sure. I wasn’t allowed to take my trip I was expecting to for work and I started watching the news a lot more.
    1. What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
    Media coverage was constantly going and the reporters didn’t even know what was happening during some of the time. They reported a plane accident resulting in a crash into the tower for the first plane. Things like this happen during those times, the news has to keep reporting something, even if they don’t have any new facts.
    1. What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night? (Show them the transcript here or video below.)
    President Bush’s speech was timely, calming, and informative. He said the truth and informed people of the tragedy but also brought over a calmness so that people could be at a little more ease. He helped pull us all back together I thought it was really good.
    1. How did life change for you and your family in the weeks and months after 9/11?
    There was no travel immediately after, and once there was again, it wasn’t nearly the same atmosphere. The markets closed as well, and even though my office was full, work was not being done really. Eventually work went back to normal sort of, I would say national unity increased along with a sense of togetherness and anxiety went down.
    1. Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?
    Since that day, terrorism has become more and more of a fact of the world we are living in. There has been a much higher frequency of terrorist attacks especially within the last few years. America has also become a lot less naive, but at the same time as a whole we are a lot less eager to go fight in wars these days.

    This interview has shown me that even though there is technically one story to what happened on 9/11, you could actually argue that there are hundreds of millions. Every person has a different depiction of that day and what happened and how they reacted. My dad was obviously home so his story was different than those of the people who even work with him who were already at the office. His stories and memories aren’t shared by any one other person because he was quite literally alone when this all first unfolded. This experience has also shown me that even if you weren’t in the city or even knew someone in the city at the time, you can have an emotional connection to the city. My dad for example had a strong connection to the buildings because he had been there previously and this further connected him to it. Regardless, I feel like every American had to have felt connected to the city and what was happening because it was our country as a whole. This brings me to my last point which is that I also realized that this attack may have hurt the people and the buildings, but it only strengthened our nation as a whole. People were out helping each other both in and out of the cities and nationalism was on the rise.
14. Pietro Davi May 21, 2017 at 4:38 pm

    What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    My name is Anne Guillet (mother), and I was 25 at the time of the attack.
    What is your first memory of the attack and what kind of conclusions did you come to?
    I was on my honey moon in the middle of the Indian ocean without any electronic devices in her hotel room. With my husband, we went to buy water, and saw what happened on a TV. At first, we thought it was a movie, but later a journalist started talking, and we were shocked. I thought it was a barbaric act, a disgrace to the human world. It violated all civil rights and virtues democracy is founded on, and was extremely sad. Our honey moon ended ten days later, and going back to Europe, we heard the full story, and solidarity and compassion with America took over our hearts.
    What were your family’s reactions and feelings?
    We were all extremely scared for the future of our countries and peace in the world. My mother was more distant to the event because my father had a critical health condition, and was in the hospital, so she already had things to worry about. We all thought innocent people had been killed for no reason, and that matters needed to be taken to prevent any further atrocious events. We were all extremely sad for the people in the United States, in particular my father-in-law, who had some relations with people who lived in America.
    How did Europe react to the attacks in the days to come?
    People felt sorry for the people that died. The news of this event stuck with our society for a very long time, and did result in people avoiding Muslims, scared that the same thing would happen in Europe. All the European governments and their Presidents united to send help and men to help New York. The fact that America had been struck so harshly but terrorist forces did scare the majority of the population, seeing that also a superpower like the United States could be so barbarically and unexpectedly attacked.
    How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?
    Me and my husband had to travel back to Europe after our honey moon, and we were scared to fly because I was pregnant, and we didn’t know what to expect. The airport was an uncomfortable place, since so many people were reunited, and could be the target of another terrorist attack. From then on, we were scared to go in largely frequented places, especially next to sky scrapers.
    How do you think the world has changed since 9/11?
    There has surely been more control in public places, such as airports, to prevent any more of these vents from happening. I think people became less open to social interaction, only trusting very few people around them. An increased feeling that anything can happen (nothing is impossible) increased drastically: unexpected events could happen anywhere at any time. Now people enjoy life every day because It can “go bad” the day after. Less trust toward Muslim groups did become more popular, and now with the more recent terrorist attacks this sentiment is growing again.

    Personal Reaction:
    Before this interview, I knew what happened to the United States and the general feeling that roamed the earth, but I had little to no knowledge on how European countries and people felt and related to this event. This interview really opened my mind and helped me move from an American point of view of the event to a more world-wide one, thanks to the events and feelings my mother portrayed to me. It was very interesting to see how both my parents were isolated from the event for a week and how after a few hours back home they were exposed to all of the news. It showed me how important technology was at the time of the event. The fact that when my parents first saw the news they believed it was a movie, really showed me how unexpected and unrealistic such a sad event was, and how it changed the world forever.
15. Claire Hornburg May 21, 2017 at 4:50 pm

    My dad was 34 at the time of the attacks
    Me: Where were you at the time of the attacks?
    Dad: I was working for MetLife at the time and I was working at our office in Detroit
    Me: What were the reactions of the other people around you to the attacks
    Dad: I remember a coworker of mine said, “you should come in the conference room because something happened in New York and you probably want to see it”, so I went to the conference room and they had the TV on and one of the news programs was on, and at this time both of the towers had been hit by planes. We were all kind of standing around and watching, and then they made the announcement about the plane that crashed into the pentagon in Washington, and I remember people crying and getting really scared, because they really thought this was like a coordinated massive attack on the country and nobody knew what else was coming next and the building we worked in was right next to the fisher building in Detroit, which has like a gold dome on the top and I think people were a little worried that it could be a target because it was a very prominent building, so people were very scared.
    Me: How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?
    Dad: Well, not very much, because we weren’t living in New York, you know living in Detroit, it didn’t really have a big impact, although since my company at the time [MetLife] was very much a New York company, it affected me professionally because a number of MetLife’s customers were very heavily hit, like a lot of our customer’s employees died in the world trade center, and on the planes that crashed into them, so MetLife had an enormous financial impact because we paid out a lot of death and disability claims, and then that sort of had a ripple through our entire business and even though none of the customers that I was working on, which at the time was really just General Motors, were directly impacted, there were certain things about actions MetLife took in response to the attacks that affected all of our customers, so I had to explain some of those things to GM, and one of my college roommates worked in the World Trade Center. Now I didn’t know which of the world trade centers he worked in. Turns out he worked in building 4, which was not one of the three that went down, and ended up being fine, but I remember that day being very scared and didn’t know where he was, and didn’t really catch up with him until the very end of the day. So I guess personally it didn’t affect us very much, simply because we weren’t living in New York. My mother was, but she didn’t work anywhere near there. I didn’t really know anybody who was directly affected, but professionally, because MetLife was a New York company, it did have a certain effect on me.
    Me: What was your reaction to the attack, given that you had family and friends living in New York?
    Dad: I wasn’t worried about family because my mother was there but she didn’t work in Manhattan, and my aunt and uncle both live in Manhattan, and worked there at the time, but I knew they didn’t work downtown, so I wasn’t really worried about any family. I was very worried about my friend Eric [college roommate] who I told you about, and I remember being very choked up when I finally caught up with him at the end of the day because I was really worried about what had happened to him. Like I said, I didn’t know if he worked in one of the buildings that was directly hit, so it turns out he wasn’t in any danger, but I didn’t know that. So when I finally found out, I was very relieved.
    Me: What did you think about president Bush’s address the night of the attacks?
    Dad: I thought it was very good. He seemed very strong and resolved that we were going to get to the bottom of whoever it was, and he was going to hold whoever it was accountable. I think people misunderstand one of the things he said. He was addressing countries like Afghanistan that harbored terrorists within their borders, like the Taliban and Al Qaeda who were training in Afghanistan. He was addressing the governments and leaders of countries that allowed terrorist organizations to train in their countries and he basically said, ‘You have a choice. You’re either with the terrorists, or you’re with us’, and so many people have either misinterpreted that as, ‘you’re either with us or against us’, and that was even in Revenge of the Sith, remember? Didn’t Anakin say something like ‘you’re either with me or you’re against me’?
    Me: yeah, he said ‘if you’re not with me, you’re my enemy’ or something like that
    Dad: Exactly, and that wasn’t was Bush was saying, he wasn’t trying to draw a distinction for everyone in the world, what he was specifically addressing was governments who had the power to either allow or not allow terrorists to train inside their countries, and I thought the point he made there was good. I was very supportive of the president, as most people were; I mean I think his approval rating was like ninety-something percent right after that, so I was very supportive of the president after that.

    I thought the interview was very interesting, because I had never really thought about how the attacks affected my family personally. It didn’t really occur to me prior to this that my dad had family and friends in New York, and that maybe they were affected in some way. I obviously knew that he had family there, and I knew the attacks happened in New York, but I had never put the two together. I also hadn’t thought about how people might have been scared that day that there were more planes coming. It didn’t occur to me that during that day people didn’t know how many planes there were, so they were scared it was a widespread attack on the country. Another thing that I found interesting was the fact that my dad worked for MetLife, who had to provide the death and disability claims for the victims of the attacks. I knew my dad worked in life insurance, but I didn’t know he worked with companies who had offices in the World Trade Centers.
16. Gabe Abraam May 21, 2017 at 4:57 pm

    John Abraam
    Father
    29 at the time of the attack

    1. Q: What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
    A: I thought it was just an accident at first before the second plane had hit. It was a little suspicious but I didn’t think it was intentional.
    2. Q: Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other people’s reactions to the attacks?
    A: I was at my work office about to have a meeting and when I had gotten there no one showed up. I waited until I eventually went to my boss’s office and when I had gotten there, he had his TV on with the news coverage of the first plane being hit. Eventually me, my boss, and my other colleagues were gathered around his desk when during getting a shot of the first building’s fire, the second plane has struck. Everyone’s reaction was startling and from there we all knew that this was no accident. We had kept watching for another 20 minutes or so before telling everyone what had happened and people started to go home.
    3. Q: What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
    A: I remember Brian Williams being on NBC and since NBC’s headquarters are in New York, they would be interviewing people before the buildings had collapsed. I also remembered the people being told to evacuate and out of their apartments, homes, and work that were near the world trade centers. Another thing I remember from the news were the people that would come up to the camera with a picture of someone that was in one of the towers telling the viewers to watch and see if the person they were looking for turned up.
    4. Q: Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?
    A: I remember most vividly when I was waiting in the conference room when no one showed up. This is because it was a such a routine meeting that happened at my office every week it was so bizarre that no one showed up. I also remember walking down the empty hallway going to my boss’s office and feeling weird and feeling that something was off and was not right. I also remember vividly when I walked into my boss’s office and at first being confused and then I saw what was on the TV which has just made me more confused as to what was going on.
    5. Q: How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?
    A: What had changed for me was thanks to the media and news coverage on TV following the attacks. I remember it was everything people talked about at work for days after the attacks. Also, every day I would come home from work for at least 2 weeks after the attacks, I remember seeing all of the news about trying to find the people who were missing in the attack. This had us and many others watching TV and the news a lot more than we had before and many talked about it for a while afterwards too.
    6. Q: What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night?
    A: I think that President Bush’s address was very patriotic and showed a lot of nationalism. I remember people saying that they had liked his speech a lot and felt more comfortable, at least to the people I talked to. I also felt like he would do whatever it takes to help America become stronger from the attacks.

    During APUSH I had only known some views and effects of those who were only very close to 9/11, like the people in New York. This is because I had watched a couple 9/11 specials in the past but never really had an interview with someone and heard from someone about it that was closer to me and was in the perspective of something that I could relate to more and understand, rather than someone who was living in New York City at the time. I also had never really had a full on interview about the attacks with my parents before this either, besides asking a couple short questions in the past, so I finally got their side of the story which was both fascinating and interesting to listen to.
17. Jack Walt May 21, 2017 at 5:07 pm

    Janet Jacobs-Walt
    Mother
    Age 44 on 9/11/01

    Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?

    I was at the home of a client, in the basement. He was on the treadmill and the TV was on CNN. All of the sudden, across the screen, the World Trade Center popped up with billowing smoke coming out. We were in a state of shock and confusion for about one minute. My client pointed out the possibility of it being related to terrorism.

    What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?

    The sight of the building smoking was my first and most lasting memory. Even after my client and the news talked about terrorism, I held onto the possibility of it being some kind of freak accident. It wasn’t until the second plane hit that I ruled it out.

    What were other peoples’ reactions like in the days after the attacks?

    There was a feeling of sadness and shock wherever you went. As more information and tragic stories came out in the following days, the attack became more and more real. Many parents were trying to hide their kids from the horrific scenes and events that were playing on the news.

    How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?

    Travel was stopped for days after the attacks and your uncle Steven was supposed to come to Detroit from Charlotte on the 12th. He did not get in until days later. Everywhere you went people were glued to the screen. In restaurants, the nail salon, and every other tv around, people were following the many layers of the story that were unfolding by the minute.

    What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night?

    In face of such an event, there is nothing else he could have said about it at the time. He did well in keeping the American spirit up.

    How did life change for you and your family in the weeks and months after 9/11?

    I didn’t know what to say to Aaron. he was four years old at the time, and I did not know how to put into words what most adults couldn’t even wrap their head around. Also, your father refused to step foot on a plane for 2 years after.

    Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?

    Security has definitely heightened, but it’s still not perfect. Also xenophobia became much more prevalent after the attacks and is still present today, especially in the president.

    Hearing my moms recollection of 9/11/01 was an interesting experience. I was surprised that she didn’t remember Bushes address to the nation that was attached to the blog. After I showed her, she was impressed at the sincerity that Bush demonstrated. Her reaction was also surprising to me because she did not always support the decisions he made, but liked his message of unity and perseverance. It was intriguing to hear about how my parents communicated the events to my brother and I. It was a delicate situation because they didn’t want to upset or confuse us, but wanted to encourage open communication within our family unit.
18. Lexy S. May 21, 2017 at 5:14 pm

    What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    My name is Sarah Schuster, mother. I was 35 on 9/11.

    What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
    My first memory was seeing it, because the TV was already on. I saw the plane crash and I wasn’t sure if it was real. I went to tell my dad and he already had the news on. He told me that it was okay, they’d just nicked the building. We watched for 10 minutes and the building suddenly collapsed. I kept asking if it was real. We just thought it was a random airplane at first, because we had never heard of that form of terrorism before that.

    Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?
    I had to get a haircut around 4 o’clock and I went to Birmingham and there was literally no one on the streets: no cars, no people. It was eerie. Inside of the salon, it was just me and the hairdresser and nobody else. Everyone was just really freaked out.

    What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
    I just remember that we were getting the bare minimum of what was happening. We heard about how they hijacked the plane and were wondering if they were going to crash into the Pentagon or White House. We didn’t get the pictures of the people jumping out of the towers until later. At first, they just kept showing the plane crashing into the building over and over. There was no twitter, no instant media coverage. There was a lag time for when we were getting the information, so things escalated really slowly.

    What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night? (Show them the transcript here or video below.)
    Looking at it now, I just think it’s a lot of acting. At the time, I hated him so I didn’t consider the speech soothing at all. I felt like they left out a lot of information about who these people were; considering who his father was, he should have had more information. The speech was really general, broken down to the most basic information. They obviously knew a lot more than what they were really telling everybody.

    How did life change for you and your family in the weeks and months after 9/11?
    Well, we had someone in the military so a lot changed. We couldn’t contact them, couldn’t visit the base or know anything that was going on.

    Now that it’s been almost 16 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?
    I think we’ve been fed a lot of propaganda but I don’t feel that we’ve really ever been given the full truth. The attack was like a trigger for a sort of mass paranoia that had never existed before. In the midst of all of this, we were also going to war. 9/11 gave us a reason to go to Iraq, which I feel like enflamed the entire situation. Would terrorism have escalated how it has without the two wars? Was the War on Terror really the answer to containing this kind of terrorism? TSA was also created and I think it was necessary and should have happened a long time ago—Israel has had security like TSA for a long time. I don’t think TSA is a great system though, carrying 3 ounces of shampoo shouldn’t be illegal; I think they just do all that to make us feel safer.

    The interview isn’t extremely shocking to me, because my mom’s always shared these memories with me. She’s a conspiracist, so discussions about 9/11 and other large political events aren’t unusual. The attack was absolutely awful, and I’ve always felt horror and patriotism in response to the concept of a threat to my country. However, as I’ve learned more about the actions of the government and CIA in the past, I’ve started to believe that there was a form of conspiracy going on. Bush may not have done 9/11, as many believe, but the fact that four planes from commercial airlines could be hijacked so easily and could’ve made their way easily into New York City seems shady to me. I’ve always been fascinated with my mom’s description of the streets after 9/11, and the generally shaken atmosphere of everyone.
19. Joey Shapero May 21, 2017 at 5:44 pm

    My mom, Nancy Shapero
    Q1) Where were you when you first heard of the attacks and what was the first thing you did?
    A1) I was in my bedroom getting ready to wake you (me) from your morning nap, you were only 5 months old. I called my mother and brother who both lived in New York, But I couldn’t get through because all of the phone lines were so busy.

    Q2) What was you first though when the 1st World Trade Center was hit?
    A2) I did not think it was terrorism, because it was not the first thing that came to mind back then, it is different than nowadays when the first thing that comes to mind is a terrorist attack. I thought it was just a plane crash and an accident, something happened to the plane. When the 2nd plane hit that was when things got very scary and people had the thoughts of “what, how is the possible?”.

    Q3) Being from New York did you know people involved or hear stories of people who were there? If so what were they?
    A3) Yes, my friend Karyn worked in the World Trade Center, she had just gotten off the subway which is under the World Trade Center. She was walking to her office and there was a lot of commotion but she did not know what had happened because she was coming from underground in the subway. She just started running up the stairs to street level haring everyone yelling “get out! Get out!”. She got out and had major PTSD from the experience, she still talks about it to this day and she still gets emotional when the topic is mentioned. My brother worked uptown at a hotel and saw so much trauma and people coming in that day for help, that he was stuck in the city for a couple of days, but once he did get out he quit his job in the city and to this day won’t work in the city anymore and works much closer to home.

    Q4) What was an immediate effect of the attacks on you?
    A4) I was very emotional, I had a lot of family in New York who I couldn’t get in touch with and I was just thinking, what next. It was like time stood still, I had no idea where and when it could happen again I was just afraid all the time for a very long time. Now we are aware that terrorism is an issue, but after 9/11 people were scared all of the time.

    Q5) What image or memory comes to you when you think back to that day?
    A5) A friend of our family had a daughter who about to have a baby, and I didn’t even know her, only her name. Her husband died in the attacks and I had a baby who was 5 months old and I just kept thinking that she said goodbye to her husband in the morning as he left for work, without knowing he would never come home. I think about it when I say goodbye to you guys (the family) to cherish every moment and know that anything can happen.

    This interview was very eye opening to me, I never knew about many of these stories my mom had told me and it is very eye opening to me the effects it still has on her. I was obviously too young to remember anything from that day, but to know that I was part of that day with my mom is very interesting to me. This interview makes me even more interested in the attacks and makes me want to learn even more about them, as my uncle was so shook by the day that he wont work in the city anymore. I can also relate this moment to the Paris attacks, as it was not a domestic U.S attack, it was very traumatizing to me as my parents told me what was happening and I saw the events unfold on social media.
20. Nico Jones May 21, 2017 at 5:48 pm

    What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    My name is Freda Jones. I was 27 years old when 9/11 happened.

    What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
    I was at working the checkpoint of American Airlines as their quality assurance manager covering over 400 employees. I was trained to make sure that weapons and bombs did not make it past the checkpoint. We got a call alerting us to shutdown checkpoint and they said that the United States is under attack. I had to shut down the checkpoint and clear out the area where family members were waiting and where people were waiting to catch their flight. The family members were waiting for a plane that would never arrive because it was believed that it was one of the planes that went into the towers. I had to notify the other managers of the precautions that we needed to take, while clearing out the terminal. Our job was to bring family members waiting for flyers to a closed room with grief counselors. After notifying my managers, a call came in, that there was a bomb at baggage claim. I went to alert managers to detain and clear out baggage claim, while not trying to alarm passengers. Then the bomb squad arrived in their suits to secure the package. Chaos was starting to stir in the terminals so I knew that they were going to start letting the buses through checkpoint. So i boarded the first military bus I saw. Traveling towards the El Segundo Air Force Base to go to the child development center to be with my newborn baby. At that time the base was shut after I got there and the base followed earthquake protocol to stay away from windows and movable objects. And I listened to the TV to find out when it was safe to exit the military base, due to the shut down my husband was caught on the other side of the base and no one was able to move until the siren indicated we could leave. It lasted 2 hours, the longest two hours of my life. My husband was able to come rescue me and my child and take us to our home on another air force base but we were not able to live our home base once we packed our clothes. I thought the attack was something worse because the military was alerted and the airport was getting bomb threats. They were thoroughly checking everyone and a lot of people were getting pulled over on the road.

    Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other people’s’ reactions to the attacks?
    I was at the LAX airport in Los Angeles, California. Other people were in shock and they did not feel safe.

    Have you ever been to New York City or Washington D.C.? If so, how did that affect your reactions to the attacks? If not, how did the attacks alter / change your views of the cities and their inhabitants?
    Yes I have been to both of those two places and I was in disbelief and I felt sorrow because I knew some people personally that lived there.

    How did life change for you and your family in the weeks and months after 9/11?

    My job completely changed, because the airplane that was supposed to land in LA never came in and people were very scared to fly even the flight attendants but they had to. A lot of people quit their jobs. People were a lot friendlier and some people were more suspicious of others. My job got harder because there was an increase in people trying to carry weapons for personal protection on the flights. Mothers couldn’t bring baby milk or water bottles onto the planes. They also stopped people because they had underwire in their bras and the lines got ridiculously long like today. We had 2 hour wait lines. Security measures to go through flyers things were checked everything was checked. There were through background checks just to be able to fly.

    My Reaction
    I was very surprised to hear everything that my mom remembered from 9/11. Before this interview I knew that my mom worked at LAX but I didn’t know everything that happened as the day progressed. I also did not know that there were bomb threats or that a plane that crashed was supposed to land in CA. I thought that the fact that people who died during the 9/11 attacks had family members at LAX waiting for them at the same airport my mother worked was very scary and upsetting. I do not have any memories of 9/11 because I was about 8 months old at the time. This interview was very enlightening and it has changed my perspective on 9/11.
21. Clare Walton May 21, 2017 at 6:48 pm

    Names: Jeff Drake and Kim Drake
    Where were you during the attacks?
    Mr. Drake: I was at Newark Airport, i was sitting on a plane getting ready to go to Ann Arbor. The plane was having some delays so we never got off the tarmac. About 20 minutes after the second plane hit the second tower we were told to get off the plane. From there a lot of the passengers were looking out a window that was facing Manhattan. We could see the two towers. Smoke was coming from the tops and blowing right at us so it was hard to see much more than that. All passengers in the airports were then pushed out of the airport and we were all standing around. There wasn’t anyway for me to get home, we lived in upper Manhattan and all access to Manhattan was shut off.
    Mrs. Drake: I was a teacher at a private middle school. Our principal was told about it and she came to each of our rooms and told us. We had to call all parents to come pick up their children. Some other colleagues and I stayed with the kids whose parents didn’t come pick them up, almost all of them who stayed had parents in the towers. The school was right across the street from the hospital which was taking most of the injured people.
    How did you first hear about the attacks and what was your reaction?
    Mr. Drake: While we were on the plane getting ready to go, people were getting emails about the first attack. Everyone including myself thought it was just some idiot who was flying down the Hudson but got too close to the towers and hit it. Later when the second tower hit did we get more information that it was actually passenger planes like the one we were on.
    Mrs. Drake: The principal at our school told us. We were all concerned and tried to go on to keep the kids occupied while their parents were being contacted.
    What was it like being in the city during this time?
    Mr. Drake: well i wasn’t in the city when the planes first hit but the rush and confusion trying to get a hold of Kim who was in the city. There was a mass of people going from the airport trying to figure out where to go since we couldn’t get into the city.
    Mrs. Drake: The people were quite calm. When i walked home later in the evening it was like something from a zombie movie. There weren’t any cars on the street. Just a flood of people including myself walking down Broadway trying to go somewhere safer. Everyone was trying to figure out where safe was. There wasn’t any cars on the road because it had all been shut down. The sky and all around us was smoky and dusty. This was a few hours after both of the towers clasped.
    What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night?
    Mr. Drake: I don’t think i even saw it. No one at the time in New York was worried about politics.
    Mrs. Drake: I don’t remember his address. I do however remember the praise Mayor Giuliani was getting. He put everything into action and we were all impressed.
    How did this attack affect your family?
    Mr. Drake: It was a motivating factor to move, we already had dislikes about the city and wanted to get out, but this was a factor in our decision. We figured we’d be safer in Bloomfield Hills.
    Mrs. Drake: this was a couple months after i found out i was pregnant with Will (their son), and we were already thinking about moving so we wouldn’t have to raise him with a balcony as a backyard and paying 20,000 dollars for him to go to kindergarten. So as Jeff said it was a factor into us moving out of the city.

    Learning about 9/11 from the point of view from someone who was actually in the city during the time really made an impact on me. I’ve known them for as long as i can remember and i can’t imagine what it was like for them, considering they weren’t with each other when the attack happened. It was hard to listen because they both lost friends in the incident. It all puts a new perspective on the whole thing for me.
22. Hassan Dabliz May 21, 2017 at 6:54 pm

    1. I interviewed my father Ahmad Dabliz who was 36 at the time of the attack.
    2. What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings?
    “I had just gotten to work and had heard about the first tower, me and everyone at work thought it was an accident just like the news had reported but once the second plane had hit we knew that it wasn’t an accident. The news had reported that the incident was an attack, but I just kept hoping that it wasn’t because the thought of human beings doing something this horrible and disturbing was just something I couldn’t believe.
    3. Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?
    I was at work when I heard about the first attack and had seen updates about all of the other attacks throughout the day. Everyone at work was saw what was going with me and we all were at a loss of words. The whole day we sat there horrified looking at the news seeing the towers in that condition was something that was hard to see for us at work.
    4. Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?
    The most vivid memory I have of that day is the various images that were shown on the news during the events. I saw the second plane hit the tower and that was very difficult to see. But the most difficult thing I saw was the collapse of the buildings. To see two tall towers in a crowded city like that because of the actions of a few men. That was just very difficult to see.

    5. What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
    I remember that the news was very subjective and unbiased especially when talking about the attacks. I understood that though because of course many of the people reporting the news were American and they viewed the attacks as an attack on them. So I understood the unbiased nature of the media that day. I also remember that every channel I switched to was talking about the attacks and that of course it was all anyone was talking about.
    From the interview I was able to understand how that day must have been for my dad while he was at work seeing this and still having to focus on work. I understand now how the U.S really came to a halt that day just to mourn and see what was going on because what had just happened was unfathomable for everyone to see, and it was defiantly out of the blue as well. For all those people watching the news to see people choose jumping out of the building from 100 stories high because they felt that that was a better escape than the building collapsing on them must have been horrifying and terrible. To see the two mighty towers just collapse the way they did too and see that with their own eyes is just something people shouldn’t see.
23. Brett Hutchison May 21, 2017 at 7:00 pm

    Geoff Hutchison

    2.) I remember I was talking with some colleagues when someone came in and told us to turn on the TV. It was a few minutes after the first plane hit, and we saw smoke rising from about halfway up WTC One. No one knew exactly what had happened then because no one in the room knew a plane had crashed into the building. Someone thought it was a bomb, others a fire, but most of us believed it was an accident, because no attack of such magnitude had ever taken place.
    3.) I was at a Jewish community center where my company was going to do some renovation. Everyone basically had the same reaction of shock, awe, and uncertainty I did. Up to the time of the second plane hitting the second tower, no one was really scared because, like I said, everyone thought it was some sort of accident.
    4.) I went to NYC in December 2013 with my family for Christmas Break. We went to the site of the attacks and saw the memorial for the victims, the pool, and the museum (which was not open at the time). My first thought upon arriving at the memorial was one of grief and while it was moving and sad to be at the site where thousands died in a single day, it was also moving to see how so many brave, heroic people who died trying to save others were honored and remembered by the people of the city they dutifully and proudly served. I also remember looking at the scenery surrounding the memorial, noting people going about their own lives, and how regular and peaceful it looked, and thought how it was just another day in NYC when the attacks happened.
    8.) My most vivid memory was seeing the first tower collapse. I had just called your (Brett’s) mother to see if she knew what happened. At that time she was home with you and your sister, and a few minutes after she turned on the TV, the first tower collapsed. When I saw it happen, I realized that the people were still trapped in there were regular people who, like me, had spouses, children, and that they would soon be gone, leaving behind only memories of their existence and changing the lives of their families forever.
    10.) The media coverage that day and for the next few weeks were extensive. On every news channel there was the same thing: video footage of the planes crashing, the towers falling down, people being pulled from the rubble, it was all constant. There were a few false reports that most people knew were questionable but no one could confirm because there was no firm evidence, one of which was the death toll. For weeks it was far higher than the current total, and only came down after the authorities had figured out things like who went to the WTC that day, the number of people on the planes, and the number of missing or unidentifiable people.

    I went into this interview expecting my dad’s reaction to be similar to that of basically everyone else I have spoken to about 9/11, and it was. Things like his uncertainty during the attacks and shock at the unprecedented scale of the attacks were things I have seen and heard from other people. What I found most interesting was how my dad explained that he was at a Jewish community center on 9/11, and some of the people there were survivors of the Holocaust, and that even though everyone there was witnessing the same things, my dad said that only those survivors could relate to the people who were in the towers or surrounding areas in that they were staring death in the face and might not survive.
24. Ian Rosenwasser May 21, 2017 at 7:09 pm

    Mitch Rosenwasser
    Dad
    38

    What is your first memory and what conclusions did you come to?
    I was on the way to work (Startrax) and I heard it on the first crash on the radio and the second crash at work. When I heard the first crash I thought it was an accident, but after the second I knew it was an attack because there couldn’t have been 2 attacks on the same buildings in that short of a time frame.

    How did going to NYC and DC affect your reactions to the attacks?
    Going to the cities helped me visualize what actually happened rather than just hearing about it.

    What were other people’s reactions after the attack?
    Everyone was in a state of disbelief. Rob Basuit (co-worker) got out his car and said, “what the hell is going on.”

    How did life change for you right after the attacks?
    I was fearful of travelling, especially by plane. I was much more aware in airports while boarding. There was a no fly zone over all stadiums and I was at the Michigan, Michigan State Football game. A huge jet appeared over the stadium and then veered away. I remember everyone was just silent as it flew over.

    What did you think of the media coverage of the attack?
    I thought the media was trying to be respectful, but they were also trying to report exactly what happened, and these contradicted each other.

    After 15 years how do you think America has changed?
    The country has become more cautious with security in travel, and also more vigilant in tracking down terrorists.

    Jen Rosenwasser
    Mom
    32

    What is your first memory and what conclusions did you come to?
    A colleague knocked on the door of my room and told me what happened. I was very fearful because I had a 4 month old at home, and I was scared of what the world was becoming.

    Did you know anyone in the cities? Did you contact them? What was the conversation like?
    Yes, I knew people and I tried contacting them. I just wanted to make sure that they ok. They said everyone was ok and no one was in the city. I was thankful that my family was ok.

    I knew the basis of the 9/11 attacks because I watched many videos and heard teachers talk about it. I’ve never heard my parent’s perspectives of the events, and it was interesting to hear their viewpoints. I learned that my dad initially though the attack was an accident, and many others also had the same reaction. It was also interesting to hear my dad’s story about the Michigan football game because if I was in his shoes I would also be frightened. Lastly, my dad talked about the increased travel security, and I’ve noticed that with the long time it takes to get through customs.
25. Kyle Alkatib May 21, 2017 at 7:42 pm

    What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    I am Matthew Alkatib and I was 33 years old on 9/11.

    What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
    I thought at first that it was an accident but when the second plane hit, I realized that it was something bigger and throughout the day as I watched the news, I found out that we were under attack and this was not an accident. I thought it was an accident because when I heard about it, I was just like a plane was just flying too low but then when the second plane hit, I knew that it was bigger than an accident.

    Where were you when the attacks happened?
    I was driving on the highway and I did not have the news on the radio, I had music on. I noticed that there was a lot of traffic on the highway on the way to work. When I got to work, the first customer walked in and asked me if I heard what happened in New York. I then turned on the TV when the second plane hit and that is when I knew we were under attack.

    What were other peoples’ reactions like in the days after the attacks?
    People were all upset and scared. Nothing had happened like this before and they didn’t know what was going to happen next. People started panicking and people started to fill up their cars with gas. Gas stations doubled their prices too take advantage of the situation and make money off of all the people that were scared. No one was on the street and no one came to shop at my store for anything. Everyone stayed home.

    What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
    The news was on all day covering everything on the attack. They had split screens showing the pentagon and the twin towers. Everything was being covered and it even showed the people jumping off the twin towers. The news was talking about what happened and why it did all day and trying to figure it all out.

    Before this interview I never really asked my dad where he was and what he was doing on 9/11 so it was really interesting to see what he was doing. I found it very interesting that people got so scared that they started filling up their cars with gas and that the gas stations even double the price! I thought it was crazy that no one came out of their house and no one went to shop at his store. This interview really helped me understand more about what happened on 9/11 and it helped me understand more of what people thought about the attack.
26. Lindsay Merline May 21, 2017 at 8:13 pm

    My name is James Merline, father of Lindsay Merline. I was 42-years-old.

    What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
    I knew it definitely was not an accident and I knew it was an attack. I had no idea who or why. I think it got explained shortly after, thought it was definitely Bin Laden because of his connection to the twin tower bombing from several years earlier. Bin Laden took credit for the first time, and warned that we’d be attacked again.

    Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?
    I was on my way to work when the first plane hit, and I heard about it on the radio. They didn’t know if it was just an accident because planes had hit buildings before. Then, I got to work and started my work day and noticed people standing in a work room, huddled around a TV. On the TV was the 2nd plane hitting the 2nd tower while we were watching the first one smoke. We watched that for another half hour, and then the plane hit the Pentagon. That’s when we all knew we were under attack. We were all shocked and scared. My first reaction was to pick up my 4-month-old daughter from daycare.

    Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?
    Right after the Pentagon got attacked, we really knew it was bad and I got a call from a customer about a problem and it seemed like, and I didn’t understand why he was concerned about this problem at this time because we were under attack, so I just kind of blew him off and ignored him and went to go get you at daycare.

    How did life change for you and your family in the weeks and months after 9/11?
    Nothing changed in our lives so much except the same feeling that was over the whole country, everyone was afraid. It seemed like one red alert after another, after we watched and combed through the smoking ruins of New York.

    Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?
    We’re more concerned with the radical muslim issue than we ever were before, so we kind of got dragged into, which we not-so-successfully ignored over the past 50 years. Airports it’s completely different. I used to be able to show up at the airport just before the gate closed, and so that’s a thing of the past.

    After hearing my dad’s personal memory of the attack, it truly made me realize that that attack was real. My dad experienced the horror and fear that the whole country felt, and it’s crazy to me to be living with someone who experienced such a feeling. I knew beforehand that just about everyone in America was watching the television while the planes continued to hit the different buildings, but it was extremely interesting to me to hear that initially my dad thought it was an attack, rather than an accident. I was unaware that Bin Laden suggested that he had to do with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and had no idea that the world was already discriminating against Muslims before 9/11 to the extent that they did after 9/11.
27. Jay Stansberry May 21, 2017 at 8:21 pm

    Dad, Bob Stansberry
    What is your first memory of when you heard of the attacks?
    I was, uhh, a little confused because I heard a plane flew into the twin towers. I thought it was a small little plan and something happened to the pilot. I never thought it was a commercial plane.
    What conclusions did you come to when the plane first crashed into the tower?
    I didn’t really know. I thought it was an accident with a small plane and the engine broke down or something.
    Where were you at the time of the attacks?
    I was at home with you guys. I was watching on TV with the little 14 inch screen or something at our old house. I was watching the news and it came on.
    What were other people’s reactions to the attack?
    It was just you guys and I called your mom and she was at work and we didn’t know what was going on. You have to remember, back then, there weren’t terrorist attacks on American soil. Now when something happens, the first thought is terrorism.
    What were other people’s reactions in the days after the attacks?
    We were all fearful. You weren’t sure if there was more to come. You know they grounded all the planes for a while, but you thought of all the other places that they could have attacked. We were at war with terror now. We were concerned because mom worked at the Ren-cen, one of the big buildings in Detroit. Could that have been a target?
    What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
    I remember watching at first when they said a plane crashed into the towers and didn’t know what had happened. I saw the second plane crash into the tower live and it didn’t matter what they said. You knew what had happened and there was no hiding it. You knew that we were being attacked. And the media admitted that we were being attacked. They were very favorable to the first responders, especially when the towers went down and afterwards during the search and rescue efforts and coverage of it. Always holding out hope they could find some survivors.
    How do you think America has changed because of the attacks now that it is 15 or so years after the attacks?
    I think, unfortunately, many people, especially politicians think it’s just the way of life. Terrorism is just a part of society, some Americans think that, and it’s not right. Its split, some people want to get rid of the problem, and some people don’t want to call it Islamic Terrorism, and some people who say that will be called racist. Some people don’t want to believe it. We’re changed as a country, we’ve become more vigilant and have more security. We have lost some of our liberty. We now have to walk through a metal detector to go to a ballgame. And not just ballgames, but a lot of events. At the airports, they have all their screenings. It’s an invasion of privacy. We have all sacrificed some of our freedoms. You probably can’t take a backpack to the thanksgiving parade, where as a boy, you could fill it with snacks, or diapers and other stuff. We have lost our freedoms as a result of terrorism and a lot of people don’t realize it. I wouldn’t say we are a more hateful country. Some may say we are more anti-Islam, but I don’t think we are.
    It’s some sad recollections.

    I went into this interview just to get this over with, but ended up having an interesting and deep conversation. We have discussed this topic before, but not like this. Since we have no ties to New York, or anyone associated with the attacks, this wasn’t as emotional as it could have been. I was kind of surprised when he talked about the fear about my mom that he had when she was working in the Ren-Cen. I think that they may have sent people home, but I never thought about it that way and instead thought of it as a thing that really was of a concern to the East coast, far away from here.
28. Paige MacDonald May 21, 2017 at 8:26 pm

    My dad, Glenn MacDonald, about 35

    Where were you when the attacks happened?
    I was sitting at my desk on the second floor at Pontiac East in the Truck Center at General Motors.

    What were other people’s reactions to the attacks?
    Well, we were all stunned. We were all wondering what was going on. We thought a terrible accident had happened. And then we saw it develop into something more sinister. It was a deliberate attack. It wasn’t just an accidental plane crash. And then we all felt very vulnerable and we wanted to suddenly become less of a target.

    Do you know anyone in the cities? If so, did you try to contact them to see if they were OK?
    No, we didn’t.

    Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day?
    Yeah, just seeing the news report on the monitors at work, in the central viewing areas in the hallways.

    What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
    Well, they were helping unfold what was happening, you know they knew more than normal people because they have links but they were just as stunned and trying to be level headed and trying not to create unnecessary panic.

    What did you think of president Bush’s address later that night? Do you remember that?
    I don’t remember it specifically, but clearly, everyone was glued to the TV to understand what was happening.

    How did life change for you and your family in the weeks and months after 9/11?
    We suddenly realized how vulnerable we are, how fragile our society is, and we knew that a lot of things were going to change.

    Like what?
    Like understanding a new enemy. What we came to find out was that enemy is terrorism. At the time we didn’t really know what it was.

    Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day?
    I think we are much more vigilant in our security, and our border security and our cohesiveness as Americans in general because the attack wasn’t just on a particular type of person. We kind of get stereotyped and that was just an attack on America in general. The sites that they were able to damage were so iconic that every American probably knew what they were. It wasn’t an attack on a particular group, it was just America in general. So then we knew that we were an equal society people-wise. We had to learn a whole lot about a different enemy. Those attackers and terrorists are truly enemies and you can say all you want about how everyone is equal but when a particular flavor of society acts that way (Muslims), you react against that. Like when we see travel bans against certain countries, you remember that 15 years ago it was a big difference. This isn’t a kinder and gentler world; it’s us against them. We know who ‘them’ is. ‘Them’ is not a reflection of all of ‘them’, but a reflection of a militarized segment of a religion. It’s a group within the religion that uses the religion as a shield. Not all Muslim people are engaged in that, of course. It’s kind of like propaganda in a way. They’re propaganda-izing their own internals to justify this means. I don’t know what the strategy is but they’re just pissed off at Americans or pissed off at western culture or pissed off at countries that buy their oil. I don’t know.

    My reflection:
    This interview has changed my perspective on America and what holds it up. I think 9/11 has not broken us, which was what the terrorists wanted to do. It has instead helped us grow into a more powerful and strong nation. I think the president dealt with it very well and he made the right decisions. We are still fighting this enemy that my dad talks about a lot, for example with our new president, Donald Trump, and his anti-Muslim sentiments. I hope this stereotype goes away in the near future. It is very sad to see many people of the same religion treated like they are terrorists. 9/11 has shaped our country into a better nation, but we still have room to improve.
29. Jackson Blau May 21, 2017 at 8:35 pm

    1.What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?

    My name is Michelle Blau. At the time of the attacks I was 29 years old. You were approximately six months old when the attacks occurred.

    2.What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?

    You were home with a babysitter and I was at my office working. I remember as clear as day sitting in my office watching the news while the first tower was burning in the media was covering what had happened. At that time I could not begin to understand what had occurred. I remember watching as the second plane hit the second tower and in a split-second recognizing that America was under attack. I turned to my boss and he immediately sent me home to be with my family. It was absolutely the most terrifying day.

    3.Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?

    I remember being glued to the television all day long wondering how we were going to be safe and what the country would do to protect all of us. I remember being scared for my child and wondering what kind of world he would be growing up in. All of my friends and family just wanted to be together remember watching the news and the days that followed and being so overwhelmed with grief over the loss of so many lives. I think the media did a beautiful job of honoring the firefighters and police officers in public servants who was running in as citizens were running out. The tributes were incredible and the images so vivid.

    9.How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?

    A memory I have just following 911 is traveling to New York City approximately 19 days after the attacks. My roommate from college was still a very close friend and her mother died. I wanted to be at the funeral. I remember boarding the plane and being so frightened. Throughout the entire flight I was teary-eyed and I also was very nervous. I remember walking through LaGuardia airport and the military was everywhere. There were dogs everywhere and men with rifles. It was surreal. I will part of me thought traveling in those days was safer than ever I was at the same time terrified. I just wanted to get to the funeral and then get back to my family as quickly as possible.

    13. Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?

    Thinking about where we are as a country today very interesting. When we go to the airport with the kids I cancel he tell him to be patient and be willing to participate in any necessary screening and security. I told him to be patient and always reiterate why it is so important. That the increased levels of security are keep Americans safe and are a direct result of 911.

    4. Have you ever been to New York City or Washington D.C.? If so, how did that affect your reactions to the attacks? If not, how did the attacks alter / change your views of the cities and their inhabitants?

    I have been to both and they are both unbelievable. They really opened my eyes to how devastating the attacks were. I think it is every Americans obligation to visit the 911 Memorial both in New York City and Washington DC at the Pentagon. It is so important to remember that day and to always continue to learn from it. There were so many heroes and brave men and women. They deserve to be remembered and honored.

    I personally was shocked by some of my mom’s answers. I had no idea that she had went to New York a couple of weeks after the attack. That experience was probably terrifying for her and I am not sure if I would’ve been able to go. I believe that 9/11 changed many lives including my own. We see repercussions of 9/11 everyday, my parents always tell me stories about how loose securities used to be. Now, security is so tight on everything. I believe 9/11 really just scared people and that is why security is much tighter. I hope I never have to experience anything like this.
30. Lily Meinel May 21, 2017 at 9:04 pm

    Tracce Meinel, my mother, she was 31 when 9/11 happened.

    Where were you when the attack happened? What were other people’s reactions to the attacks?
    Tracee: I was spending the night at my parents house with you and Sam (my older brother) because we were getting Sam’s 3 year old pictures taken. The adults that were in the house, which would be myself and your grandparent had the same reaction. It was shock, disbelief, and sadness.
    Lily (me): side note at this time my family and I were living in Colorado.

    What were other people’s reactions like in the days after the attacks?
    Tracee: I think it took a while for people to move passed the shock of it. And then there were American flags everywhere. You saw American flags everywhere. Every house was hanging an American flag. We hung up an American flag. That is how Sam learned the pledge of allegiance because we saw so many flags and we would say the pledge of allegiance every time we saw a flag. There was a very strong sense of patriotism. There was definitely angry. I do not think I personally felt any angry, but you could tell that certain people in certain conversations would get angry about the whole situation. People would say “let’s just bomb the middle east”. There were definitely the radicals out there that you would hear people talking about. There was a period of time after that we came together and became very patriotic. There was a very strong sense of we are Americans and we are going to stand together and fight. A strong sense of unity. But that is just what I saw when we were living in Colorado.

    What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
    Tracee: It was on every single channel. They did not run normal programing. It was similar to when Colorado had a couple of really big snow storms or when Columbine happened there was just media coverage. There was not anything else on the TV. I was for easily 24 hours. PBS was the only thing that was not running the attack. So you could get Arthur and Dragon Tails extra.

    What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night?
    Tracee: As you know I am not a Bush supporter. But I was highly impressed with him, his presence, how he handled the situation, and what he said. Again there was a very strong sense of patriotism and coming together as one. Becoming a united front and he was very supportive. I thought it was excellent.

    Now that is has been almost 15 years since the attack how do you think America has changed?
    Tracee: It is sad that we do not seem to have that unity that we had after that. We have lost all of that and I think that has to do with our current president and current leadership. Because of our current leadership I am fearful of more attacks on the United States. I think we were safer until Trump became our president. Homeland Security became a thing and all of a sudden we have this huge big brother. Homeland Security can do and get into any buddies business that they want too. That is scary and that is wrong. We lost a lot of our freedom because of that. But when you are protecting the populous there is a give and a take.
31. Markus Butkovich May 21, 2017 at 9:07 pm

    For my blog questions on September 11th, I decided to interview my parents. My Mom was 36, and my Dad was 38. They were both in different spots when the planes hit the World Trade Center, but they share similar stories. With the second question, what was your first memory, they share different stories. My Dad was at work talking to his friend on the phone, when his friend said “a plane just flew into the World Trade Center.” My Mom was at home with me, when she got a phone call from my Grandma. She asked if she heard what happened, then my Mom turned on the T.V. Both of my parents remembered having questions, and being in shock. All they could think was stuff such as “is there any more planes, where else will they hit,” and being in shock, not knowing what to do. Going on to question eight, what was the most vivid memory you had on 9/11, my parents also shared the same experience. At the time, both my Mom and Dad were watching the news to see what was happening. They both thought that it was an accident, until the second plane hit the towers. They say that this was their most vivid memory. Once that second plane hit, they knew that the United States was under attack. They didn’t know who it was who was attacking the United States, but they knew we were being attacked. It was the moment that changed everything, where people knew that it wasn’t an accident, but an attack by an enemy. My Dad was also telling me that he thought that when only the first plane already hit, he thought that it was a private two seat plane, but not a jet. The second plane was also a jet used as a weapon, and people watching in horror knew some clarification. Question nine talks about how people’s lives were changed directly after the planes crashed, which was the same with most people. When people found out that it was not accident, they went into shock. People didn’t know what to do. My Dad said that once that second plane hit, he realized that the world would never be the same. This attack would change so much, not just for the United States, but internationally. Things would not be taken lightly anymore, and freedoms would lost. Talking about question seven, a lot of people had the same reaction. Most people didn’t know what to do. People were on shock, and for a moment, couldn’t cope with what was happening. But people had to move forward, and after about a week, the world started again.

    September 11th is a hard subject to takle. We had to interview some about the subject, but it is necessary to learn about. I was only seven months old when it happened, so I can’t say that I know what this tragedy was like. But I can get it from first hand experiences. And I learned a lot from my parents about what it was like that day. It was hard to believe. From what I heard, I don’t know how I would’ve been able to cope with anything that day. Where do you go from a tragedy like that? Do you call loved ones? Do you stay home from work? When you see something as violent and despairing as that, how can you recover? But the world did, and that’s what matters. The world united around the United States, and unity is strong. Nowadays, it’ sad; we deal with acts of terrorists it seems almost every other week, and we just shrug it off. And 9/11 was a tragedy that won’t be forgotten, because we won’t let it happen again.
32. Lily Meinel May 21, 2017 at 9:15 pm

    My reaction was normal. I was not really shocked at all. I knew most of the stuff my mom was going to say. I did not know how strong the patriotism was after the attacks. I knew it was strong but not as strong as my mother said it was. It was cool to hear that the most people in the united states became one and united. That was cool. I did not know that basically every channel was showing the coverage of the attacks. I think that it was good of the channels to be doing that because people wanted to know what was going on. It was important for people to know if it was an attack or just an accident. And unfortunately it was an attack on the united states. Overall my reaction was how I expected it to be.
33. Donavin Stoops May 21, 2017 at 9:20 pm

    Q: What is your name and how old were you on the 9/11 attacks?
    A: Azal Stoops and I was 25 years old.

    Q: Where were you when the planes first hit?
    A: I was at my mom’s house. I just got off from my midnight shifts at the county courts and I was heading upstairs to sleep when I heard my mom telling me something terrible had just happened in New York.

    Q: What were your first thoughts when the planes hit? Did you at first think it wasn’t a terror attack, perhaps accident?
    A: Yes. When the first plane hit I thought it was an accident. “How did that happen?” “Did the pilot have an heart attack or something?” Once the first plane hit, I didn’t think it was anything but an accident. However, when the second plane hit I knew this was an attack. I didn’t call it a terrorist attack at first because, well, we didn’t have much of those before 9/11.

    Q: What do you remember about the media coverage during the attacks?
    A: I think everybody, including the news channels, were in complete shock. Every channel on TV was playing it. Every reporter was recapping, and everyone couldn’t believe what they were watching.

    Q: Did you witness a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment in the country following the attacks?
    A: Not right away, but eventually yes. The anti-muslim sentiment definitely started to come following the attacks, but not right away.

    Q: How did your life change immediately after the attacks?
    A: Right after the attacks there was fear. I was afraid to even leave my house and go somewhere. It was funny because at my job [the county courts] they had snipers on the roofs to try to keep the building safe. Everything changed because anywhere I went I felt fear. I never expected to be that fearful in this country before.

    Q: How did your life change in the weeks and months after the attacks?
    A: I thought twice about taking trips places. I started to notice I was becoming a little more suspicious at the people in my surroundings. So many people also sent money to NY and the families hurt. Other nations even sent them money, it was outstanding.

    Q: How do you think America has changed since that event almost 16 years ago?
    A: I think we changed because now we seem to stereotype more and now people are way more fearful than they had been 16 years ago. I think it made people realise that this country isn’t immune to that much death and violence.

    I learned a lot about this interview with my mother. My mother and I talked about 9/11 before, specifically her view of it, but not as in depth as this. I had no idea that they had snipers on top of her work in fear of a plane attacking it. If they placed snipers on a county building in a small city in Michigan, I can only imagine what immediate precautions they made all across the country, even the world. I am also surprised about how she said that anti-Muslim sentiment started because of the attacks. One event started this divide of Muslims and the rest of America. Because of 9/11, many Muslims are discriminated against every day in this country.
34. Hank Peters-Wood May 21, 2017 at 9:23 pm

    Interview:
    What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    Kathryn Susan Wood, 32 years old.

    What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
    When I had heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, I assumed that it was a small personal plane that had crashed by accident. It was an obvious shock, but I didn’t realize the magnitude of the situation until the second plane hit.

    Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?
    I was in a conference at my office in Detroit. The other lawyers in the meeting decided that the business they were attending to could wait and everybody left to go home. Some people were panicking, others in shock, and some didn’t seem very phased at all.

    Did you know anyone in the cities? If so, did you try to contact them to see if they were o.k.? What was the conversation like?
    Both my brother and one of my best friends were in New York City at the time. My brother was nowhere near the danger and I didn’t get ahold of him at the time, but my friend Dina called me amidst the attack. She was in the tower earlier the morning and worked right next door so she witnessed the horror first hand. Dina had told me that she was okay and that she was in a cab trying to get as far away from ground zero as possible. There was tremendous panic in the cab, especially about where to go. “Don’t go near the UN building! Stay way from the Empire State!” Is what I could hear from within the vehicle. They ended up leaving the city and going to the Hamptons where one of her friends had a home. My brother was far enough away in the city that he was okay, but he watched the smoke creep through the city. The conversation with Dina was emotional and stressful, but also incredibly relieving to know she was safe.

    Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?
    As I was walking around the corner going to the elevator to leave my firm, I heard my receptionist say from down the hall “No, she’s not here right now.” I yelled to her asking if it was Dina, and she informed me that it was. I was in the right place at the right time, and by pure luck I was able to make sure my friend was okay.

    For me, the interview was fairly interesting. Although my mother and I have talked about these stories and issues many times throughout my life, the vividness of the memories never cease to shock me. Although my mom did not have first hand experience of the events, she remembers the day clear as can be. The confusion of the moment the first plane hit, the panic when she realized it was an attack, her conversations with those close to her which were in the city, her relief when she found out they were okay, and the aftermath of the event are all very interesting to hear about. She remembers the worry that Detroit may be hit, she remembers the mourning that the nation and herself felt for weeks, and she remembers the unknown that was to come. This is a powerful, but necessary subject to remember and discuss, and I am happy that we had the opportunity to do so through this project.
35. Lizzie May 21, 2017 at 9:32 pm

    I interviewed my dad, Howard Potocsky, who was 29 at the time of the 9-11 attack.

    1.) Q: What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
    A: I was at work and it came across the radio that there was a plane crash. It later came across the radio again that there was another plane crash at the Twin Towers. Initially, I thought that the first plane crash was a bizarre accident. It was not until the second attack that everyone realized that we were under attack. Although at the time, we did not think it was Al Qaida. We thought it was just random hijackers.

    2.) Q: Did you know anyone in the cities? If so, did you try to contact them to see if they were okay? What was the conversation like?
    A: I knew a ton of people in New York City. A lot of the people that I went to college with and were in my fraternity were from New York. I contacted a lot of them to see if they were alright. However, I could not get through at first because the cell lines were so busy and the cell phones would not work for a few days. I did not personally know anyone in the towers. However, one of my best friends from college had a friend working in the Towers and he unfortunately did not survive.

    3.)Q: What were other peoples’ reactions like in the days after the attacks?
    A: I think at first a lot of people were scared and then everything kind of galvanized together. Everyone just banded together in general. Suddenly, it did not matter if you were a republican or a democrat; everyone came together and shared a lot of anger towards the attack. There was a lot of nationalistic pride that we cannot let this happen on our soil.

    4.)Q: Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?
    A: Coming home and actually seeing the video of the towers falling. I didn’t see it at work, as I didn’t have TV’s. I was in a state of disbelief when I saw the video. I just could not believe that it happened. The videos of people jumping, it was horrible. The media was nonstop covering 9/11 for days and days and days. You could not find regular TV because it was on 2, 4, and 7. It was on every local channel and every news channel for a couple of weeks at least. Even the sports channels on the radio and TV talked about it nonstop. It was all anyone talked about for weeks.

    5.)Q: What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night?
    A: I thought it was good. I thought he sounded strong as he tried to unite the country. He said that there would be a swift response and we will seek justice. I really liked his response to the attack.

    6.)Q: Now that it’s been almost 16 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?
    Security measures at the airport, sporting events, etc., actually, became way more difficult and intense. You now need your passport to cross the border. You used to just have to use your driver’s license. It almost feels like big brother’s watching. There are cameras everywhere. Also, many people became more aware of things out of the ordinary. Sadly, there is a lot of bigotry in America against many Muslims and accepting refugees into the country. Nobody is sure about who comes in. It’s sad.

    My Reaction:
    I had always known about 9/11. It is something that everyone in my class and I had grown up just knowing. All of us were newborns and too young to remember anything, and many of us weren’t even born yet. However, it happened and is something that has been briefly talked about in school for years. I had never really asked my dad this many questions about the attack. I knew what the attack was and how it affected Americans, but I did not know my dad’s personal reaction and experience with it. I was shocked that he had so many friends in New York and tried to contact them, but was unable to get a response due to busy phone lines. It was cool to hear what my dad had to say, an adult during the attack because it was different from what you learn in school. It wasn’t facts out of a movie or textbook, it was his real thoughts.
36. Grace Jung May 21, 2017 at 9:38 pm

    What is your name and how old were you during the attack?
    Gunsoo Jung and I was 40 yrs old during 9/11.

    What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse). Why?
    I couldn’t believe what happened. I was shocked. I first thought it was an attack. I didn’t think that the planes could crash into the World Trade Center by accident, so I knew it was an attack.

    Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?
    I was living in Kentucky when the attack happened. I was at church and I heard about the attack on TV. Everybody else around me also was shocked about the plane crash and couldn’t believe it.

    Have you ever been to New York City or Washington D.C? If so, how did that affect your reactions to the attacks?
    Yes, I have been to Washington DC and New York. I lived in Washington DC when I first moved to America. Living in Washington DC before the attack did not affect the way I reacted to the attack.

    Did you see any change in how other Muslims were attacked and oppressed after the attack?
    Yes, I saw a change. Sometimes people would discriminate against them and make assumptions about all Muslims and Arabs because they were afraid of them.
    (Some words and sentences were translated from Korean so they might not be word for word translations. Somethings had to be modified to make it grammatically correct.).

    What is your name and how old were you during the attack?
    Christina Jung and I was 9 yrs old during the attack and in elementary school.

    What do you remember about the 9/11 coverage?
    I was in school and I just remembered that my teacher turned on the TV. It showed the attack and everybody else was freaking out. I didn’t know what all the fuss was about. I just saw people in the building and the plane crashing into a building. I saw it from the beginning because it was rewind of everything. I saw the first and the second plane hit the building.

    What is your most vivid memory of the attack?
    Basically I remember everybody talking about Osama Bin Laden was behind the attack and that everybody hated him. Like, all I remember is the hate that all the teachers and staff were giving him. I can’t word for word describe what they were saying, but I remember them saying something about him needing to die and him being a horrible person. Because I was so young I can’t exactly describe what they were saying.

    The interview didn’t really change anything about what I knew about 9/11 and how I felt about it. My parents and family weren’t really affected by the attack and because they were still fresh off the boat immigrants they didn’t really have an attachment to America like they do now. I was kinda shocked about my father’s reaction to this interview because he was very nonchalant about it. It confuses me as to why he didn’t feel affected by the attack even though him and my mom lived there for a very long time. I would have thought there would have been a more deeper connection than “I was shocked” and “It was unbelievable”. Personally, I was only three months old when the attack happened. I have no memory what so ever about it. But I do know that my other sister Jane remembers a little bit about it. I know that the Korean community that I grew up in weren’t really affected by what happened during 9/11.
37. Josh Myers May 21, 2017 at 9:41 pm

    I had interviewed my dad, Dan Myers.
    Q1: What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    A: My name is Dan Myers and I was 35 years old at the time.
    Q2: What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks?
    A: I was at work that day at the hospital in Pittsburgh and one of the guys who works in the film room, his name was John, stopped me and said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.
    Q3: When the attacks first happened did you think it was an accident or something worse?
    A: We thought it was an accident. So when John had told me that, I had asked him if it was a big plane or a small plane. He said he thought it was like a small plane but he didn’t really know. We don’t really have TVs at work so I went back to where my work area was and we pulled up some live news, I can’t remember CNN or something like that. You could tell it was a big plane, not necessarily a jumbo jet. Initially, we had thought it was some kind of accident. We didn’t know… I think I heard about it when the first plane had hit but before the second plane had hit.
    Q4: Where were you when the attacks happened? What were the responses of the people around you?
    A: I was at work at the hospital and everything had kind of shut down once we had realized what was going on. The people gathered in their respected work areas and were trying to use the computer or in a waiting area where there were some televisions. People were in disbelief. There were no patients coming. There were security alerts coming out so people had started to leave early.
    Q5: What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
    A: I remember initially people not really knowing what was going on. I also remember there wasn’t a filter. They put on a lot of stuff initially that I think there were some regrets that they should have not shown. Those of us who had watched that day saw people jump to their deaths, showing people either jumping or falling to their death out of the burning building. I don’t blame the media so much as I think everyone was so stunned that it didn’t occur to them that they were showing some things that were unnecessarily graphic.
    Q6: Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day?
    A: There was a loss of innocence to a degree, not that we were all innocent in 2001. In one act of terrorism, thousands of people had died in the US, it took away the sense of safety that most Americans had.
    Personal Reaction:
    At the time of the attacks I was only a couple of months old, so I do not remember anything. I found the interview very interesting. I had never asked anyone about their experiences before, as I knew it was a sensitive topic for many. I was also surprised at how much my dad had remembered. I understand that there are events in many people’s lifetimes that they will never forget and this is one of them. I was still surprised by the detail that my dad recalled. I had never known much about 9/11 besides what we had learned in history class over the years. The different personal stories of people have made me realize that there is so much more to the story than what we are taught.
38. Chloe B May 21, 2017 at 9:55 pm

    1)What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    My name is Krista Brasch and I was 35 years old and had just given birth to Chloe. She was 2 months old and in her bouncy seat on the bathroom floor while I was taking a shower that morning.

    2)What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
    I was listening to Drew and Mike on WRIF radio while getting ready to go to my dermatologist appointment. I heard them say that they were getting reports that a small airplane had crashed into one of the twin towers in New York. I immediately thought it must have been a horrible accident by some new pilot because they said it was a small plane. They then proceeded to tell their listeners to turn on their tv’s because someone had video of the accident and it was being shown on tv already. Drew from the Drew and Mike show also is a licensed pilot and he kept saying that there was no way that was a small, private plane, he said it looked to him like it was a full-sized passenger jet. I immediately turned on the tv and saw the footage for myself and I too thought it looked like a big plane and I began to suspect that it was unlikely an accident. I couldn’t understand how a trained pilot could make such an obvious error. My suspicions were confirmed when the second plane crashed. I was watching tv as it happened. Everything changed from that point forward. There was NO WAY that two planes could make the same mistake. I knew this was a terrorist attack and I was scared out of my mind.

    3)Did you know anyone in the cities? If so, did you try to contact them to see if they were o.k.? What was the conversation like?
    It just so happened that my Dermatologist was also a friend of mine. I knew her husband was in New York on business. When I go to my appointment she told me that he was in New Jersey that day, thankfully.

    4)How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?
    I was consumed by this event. I kept the tv coverage on 24/7. I was in shock that something like this could happen in the USA. I felt vulnerable. It was eerie not hearing planes fly in the sky for the next couple of days. Every once and a while I would hear and see military jets flying above. I know that it exposed a big gaping hole we had in our country’s security and I felt like we were so naive. Some good came out of the bad; It was a beautiful thing to see our citizens come together and support our first responders and each other. I loved that the musical artists put on a free concert in the park in New York. However, It was so depressing listening to all the stories of people who had lost loved ones. I cried a lot during those weeks after 9/11. I had horrible nightmares for months after the crashes. I also still get very somber on each anniversary of 9/11.

    5)Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?
    I literally was stepping out of the shower and heard it on the radio. When I left for my dermatologist, my husband told me to be very careful because the terrorists were “blowing everything up.” When I got home from my derm appointment, my babysitter was close to tears watching the events unfold on the tv. I had to call my parents who were up north and had no tv to tell them, they were in shock and put the radio on. I remember calling a lot of my friends and it seemed like everyone wanted to let each other know how much we loved and cared about each other. It brought many people closer together and I think it brought our country closer together as well.

    After this interview, I am so thankful I did not lose anyone in the horrible incident. 9/11 was a tragic day but one that can be learned from. Although I have almost zero memory or the situation, the many heart breaking stories I’ve heard make me feel like I have almost witnessed it first-hand. I can’t even imagine what some families had to go through and the panic they must have felt knowing they had loved ones in the towers on that day. Although 9/11 was horrible, at least out country is better prepared to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.
39. David Boarman May 21, 2017 at 10:09 pm

    My mom, Kristi Boarman
    1.) What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    My name is Kristi Boarman. On the day of 911, I was 26 years old and living in Royal Oak, Michigan with my husband, Chad and your sister Bella, who was a year and a half old, and you who was only about 4 months old.
    2.) Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?
    I was at home taking care of my you and your sister. People’s reactions to 911 was disbelief and utter shock.
    3.) Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?
    My most vivid memory is watching the Today show and the reporter was saying that the crash was from a small plane and it was from pilot error. Just as she was saying this, the second plane crashed into the tower over her shoulder and there was a big explosion.
    4.) What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night?
    I really liked President Bush’s address to the public after 911. He was very calming and reminded me of my grandfather. The message of resilience that he gave was a fantastic message that resonated with your dad and I well.
    5.) Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?
    America has changed a lot in terms of security. Border crossings and airport security have been ramped up tenfold and it is now much more difficult to board a plane or travel to Canada. Also, xenophobia has reached new heights and is becoming a common sentiment in the United States. All of this is as a result of the 911 terrorist attacks.
    My reaction: My personal reaction to this interview is, apologetically, minimal. I know that you (Mr. Wickersham) were hoping that we would get a lot out of this interview, but I had heard the story of 911 from my parents’ perspective many a time. The first time I heard them talk about it I was very moved and I couldn’t wrap my head around it, but now I understand what happened better and I appreciate the events and the effects put in place after said event. I been going through the ramped-up security measures and the xenophobic sentiment my entire life (the part that I remember), and so therefore I don’t realize how things changed afterwards.
40. Marshall Lockyer May 21, 2017 at 10:20 pm

    Rachel Jones, Mom

    1. How old were you on 9/11?

    RJ: I was 33 at the time.

    2.What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings? Why?

    RJ: When the first plane hit the world trade center I didn’t think it was a terrorist attack, I thought it was an accident caused my miscommunication with the pilot or air traffic control.

    3. Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?

    RJ: I was at home with you in the living room(I was about 9 months old), watching CNN. I remember when your dad got home from work with a look of total shock on his face. He told me about how he and his co workers were watching the news and how many of them had to go home because they were too overcome with emotions.

    Have you ever been to New York City or Washington D.C.? If so, how did that affect your reactions to the attacks? If not, how did the attacks alter / change your views of the cities and their inhabitants?

    RJ: I had been to New York City and Washington DC before the attacks happened and I have been to both since. It wasn’t so much the attack that changed my view of New York City but when the two towers collapsed it really shocked me that the skyline wouldn’t feature those iconic buildings anymore.

    Did you know anyone in the cities? If so, did you try to contact them to see if they were o.k.? What was the conversation like?

    RJ: We didn’t know anybody there, no. But, I got a lot of calls from relatives back at home. (England)

    What were other peoples’ reactions like in the days after the attacks?

    RJ: Everyone was just really shocked, people were still struggling to comprehend what had just happened.

    Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?

    RJ: Yes, it was when CNN announced that the second tower had been hit. It was when everyone knew these were acts of terrorism.

    How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?

    RJ: Little to none to be honest. It hasn’t affected my day to day life, I didn’t know anyone in either of the two cities and it hasn’t made me fear traveling.

    Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?

    RJ: I think the country as a whole is much more fearful of people that are not the same. You also see the effects in airports with all of the new security measures that weren’t in place before the attacks.

    I wasn’t very surprised after hearing my mom’s responses. This is mostly because my parents had only been in the United States for about a year or two before the attacks on 9/11. However, one thing that surprised me was that she wasn’t really worried because her sister and her two kids lived in New Jersey at the time. The rest of her answers such as “hasn’t impacted my day to day life” and “hasn’t made me fearful of traveling” were expected because my mom is a very strong person and loves to travel. Overall though, I’m glad that I was a baby when this happened and I hope I never have to go through something as stressful as this in my life.
41. Davit Tran May 21, 2017 at 10:22 pm

    Q. What is your name and how old were you during 9/11. How old are you currently?
    A. My name is Nhi Tran, and I was 10 years old during the 9/11 attacks. Right now, I am currently 26 years old.

    Q. Where were you during 9/11 and how did the people around you react?
    A. I was at school outside on the playground during recess. I was with kids my age so we didn’t really know what was really going on. The adults were in a very serious mood and they gathered all the kids and made us go inside during the middle of our recess.

    Q. What was your reaction?
    A. I didn’t really know what was going on until we went inside and the teachers turned on the news and I saw news about a plane hitting a building and we all kind of knew that it was really serious because everyone was really quiet, but I didn’t really know the impact or the scale of the problem at that age.

    Q. Were you scared?
    A. I wasn’t really scared because it was on TV and it seemed so remote to me that it was like “its on TV, it’s a place far from me, I’m not impacted by it much” because that’s how you think when you’re young. You don’t really understand.

    Q. During the days following 9/11 did you learn more about it?
    A. It was constantly on the news and we kept hearing it as the largest terrorist attack on America.

    Q. As you get older and as your views change, how have your views changed on 9/11?
    A. Now that I am older, I realize how scary the situation was for the people involved, and the people that weren’t directly involved such as myself. 9/11 changed how we move through life in America. People are more scared, people are more biased or prejudice against certain cultures and certain people just because they are scared of the group of people behind the attacks. Everything is more fear generated and people are more protective of themselves and the people around them.

    Q. Have you ever been in New York City? Did you visit the memorial? What did you think about the memorial?
    A. Yes I have visited New York City. Yes, I have been to the memorial. I think that (Daniel) Libeskind (architect and designer of memorial) did a very good job in making a memorial that made us realize the absence that was left from those two towers. Being there and seeing the two empty lots filled with the names makes you realize the capacity of the situation.

    Q. How do you think America has changed over the 15 years? What did the attacks affect America?
    A. It definitely affected our mindset and our mentality of welcoming people into our nation like we did before. We used to be a nation of immigrants and now we are much more reserved on whom we accept. We also invest much more money into the military because we want to show people that we are strong and that people should be fearful of us so that we aren’t fearful of them. It’s like intimidation.

    Conducting this interview was a very interesting experience for me. Usually when I read or listen to a 9/11 interview, it is in the perspective of a grownup. But my sister was 10 at the time so it was insightful to learn how her teachers and school acted. But because I wasn’t even one at the time, I have no memories of the incident. Even as I grew up I didn’t really know what 9/11 was. I always thought of it as something that happened years ago and it wouldn’t effect me. But now that I am older, I know it does affect me. My parents luckily immigrated over to America before 9/11. They are the only ones of their many brothers and sisters to come over. But over the years, out of all my uncles in aunts, only one uncle was able to come over as a permanent citizen. Becoming a citizen of America today is much harder for people. 9/11 was one of the biggest terrorist attack to happen while I’m alive. As I grow older more and more terrorist attacks happen. Each time, I see how fearful and restricted our society has become compared to what it was. And I realize that our generation can never feel safe again.
42. Michael Wainer May 21, 2017 at 10:37 pm

    Interview
    For my interview about the day of 9/11 I interviewed my Grandpa Richard Weiner. At the time he was 61 years old. He and my Grandma live in New Jersey and are both now retired. However on September 11, 2001, my Grandpa worked as a Stock Trader on 40th and Park Street in New York City. At the time of the incident, he was in his office in Midtown going over Reports. When the first plane hit, he thought, “It was some dummy that had had too much to drink and decided to fly a plane,”. Later reports started coming in that it was not a small plane, but a large jet. Then the second plane hit. These two things combined lead my Grandfather to say: “This made me realize that this was a whole world come crashing down type of event.” At this point he tried to call my Grandmother to tell her he was ok, but because cell service was all down he could not get in touch with her. Everything in the city was closed: buses, trains and boats. My Grandpa was stuck in his office. He described this as especially hard because he saw everything that was going on, but knew there was nothing he could do. My Grandfather and his co-workers decided to leave and try to find a way home around 2 PM. He described to me walking through the city: “I was walking with a friend of mine down the street and we came up on Time Square. You know Time Square in Manhattan, right? Well it’s usually the center of the universe, but when me and my buddy were walking through, I didn’t see a single person or car. It looked like one of those new Science-Fiction movies where I wake up and there is nobody left in New York,”. He was finally able to get to Penn Station, and they had only one train to New Jersey, and he took it without even checking where it was too. It took him to Newark and after that he took 3 bus rides until he arrived at a mall around an hour away from his home. At this point he was finally able to get in contact with my Grandmother who had worried about him all day. She came to pick him up from the mall and they arrived back at their house around 10 PM. What had normally been an hour and a half commute took him about eight hours. This is an especially hard experience for my Grandfather because being a Stock Trader New York City, he knew people inside of the World Trade Center. After the attacks he reached out to a close friend of his, but never received a response from her. She had died almost immediately after the attack. Despite this he is able to keep a very open mind and is able to sympathize with all people. When I asked him how the world has changed since the attack he said that the main thing he has noticed is a lot of Anti-Muslim feeling. He told me about a book he read, and how it talks about Islam as a religion of peace, very similar to peace, and the crazy ways that people stretch the religion to mean things it does not represent for the majority of Muslims. He told me how 9/11 has negatively affected the view of the Muslim religion, which is really one of peace.

    Reflection
    I was unable to write this response in interview format because our conversation was at times very emotional, and often strayed away from the questions listed. With that being said I learned a great deal from my interview with my Grandfather. I have heard many stories about 9/11 and most of them are either not interesting, or are from people I do not know and aren’t as personal. Hearing about my Grandfather’s experience being in the city gives me a better perspective of how the day happened. When he told me about how he couldn’t call his wife and tell her he was ok, it gave me a view I’d never had before; somebody in the city, but in no way connected to the World Trade Center. Also, even though I did not know them, when he tells me that he knew people in the World Trade Center, and got choked up talking about it, it makes the whole thing seem much more real. Because of my interview I am able to think of this through more of a real life perspective, and less of just what I have learned in class.
43. Lindsey Nedd May 21, 2017 at 10:54 pm

    What is your name?
    “Donna Wesley”
    How old were you when 9/11 occurred?
    “40 years old”
    Where were you when 9/11 occurred?
    “I was about an hour and half away from here, I was down river in a city called Brownstown, I was there at a vender… a supplier of cardboard boxes to the automotive industry having a meeting.”
    Before the second plane crashed into the South Tower did you think the first crash was an accident?
    “I don’t think i heard, we had been in a meeting so I don’t think I knew until both planes had crashed into the towers”
    What were your first thoughts when you found out there had been a terrorist attack in the United States?
    “Probably terror. Or what’s next, will there be more bombings.”
    Did you know anybody in New York of Washington D.C. at the time? Were you scared for their safety?
    “Oh I remember I had a friend that lives in D.C. just down the street from the pentagon, and so I called him fifty million times, but I never got an answer, it turns out he wasn’t there it turns out he was here in Ypsilanti in Ann Arbor, a friend of his was ill, and so he was at the hospital with a friend . About a year before I had stayed right there were the bombing had been.”
    How did you feel when the towers fell?
    “Awful. My stomach sank”
    How do you feel about 9/11 now?
    “Well I think we have to be vigilant in terms of protecting our homeland, and helping others protect their land also.”
    How did your friends and family react?
    “People were pretty upset, your dad was pretty upset, your dad was about ready to go to war himself”
    What was the most memorable thing to you on 9/11?
    “ I guess just watching all of the rescue workers, all the police, all the firemen, all the people that helped other get to safety, or dig through all of the rubble looking for people who were still alive, looking for bodies.”
    Did you stay up to watch President Bush’s address to the nation? If so what were your thoughts?
    “ Yeah I did… umm it was reassuring to know that the government was putting forth all of the resources that they were to protect the country, and to go after whoever had done this, it was reassuring to just see all of the help and support that was there in the city , to hear the major New York speak and his commitment and umm to just see all of America come together. 9/11 made me proud to be an American, I believe in fighting for freedom, fighting for our rights, and protecting our own.”
    Did you feel like you were in danger in any point throughout the day?
    “Potentially, you know i didn’t like the thought of it potentially threatening the life of my baby”
    If you were working on 9/11 was your workplace in a panic?
    “ We weren’t in a panic , no but we were shocked”
    How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?
    “I remember you were six months old, and you were suppose to be christened like a few weeks after 9/11, and I thought oh no what if something happens and you’re not christened and were killed or something, so I did my own mini christening. I sprinkled you with water, and I said some prayers over you and I christened you myself. I didn’t like worrying about you and your safety when I went to work everyday, your dad was worried about your safety.”
    How do you think America has changed since 9/11?
    “I think it’s made us more aware of not to totally take safety and security of the United States for granted.”
    Do you think our government handled 9/11 to the best of their ability?
    “Oh yeah, I mean the government did everything that they could.”
    Did it surprise you that terrorist got close enough to hit the pentagon?
    “ I was pretty shocked”
    How did you feel when you watched the news coverage?
    “Shaken, worried concerned, upset.”
    Did you see when the South tower collapsed via news coverage? How did that make you feel?
    “ Scared, I mean there are just so many emotions and responses that came into play on 9/11.”
    Personal Reaction: It was difficult for me to watch the video in class about 9/11, I’m extremely patriotic and I love America it made my heart hurt watch a plane fly into the World Trade Center, and just thinking of all of the lives that were lost or changed negatively. I’ve been to the memorial in New York and it was the hardest thing to walk through I was basically crying the whole time. It was hard for me to do that and I was about six months old when 9/11 occured so I can’t remember anything, I can’t even imagine what it was like living through it, especially if I had a small child like my mom, I would be terrified to leave them alone just in case something happened. My mom is an extremely strong individual so it makes sense to me that she was worried and considered , but no in a full panic. Honestly I think all Americans either felt the way my mom felt or worse, I don’t think that any American could possibly live through 9/11 and not have an emotional connection to it.
44. Camille West May 21, 2017 at 11:23 pm

    1. My mom’s name is Rachel West, she was 34 at the time of the attacks.
    2. She heard about the first attack on the radio and thought it was a joke or prank on the radio show. After she heard about the second plane, she knew it was not a prank or accident. She said that she couldn’t imagine somebody doing that. She was also surprised that all airlines grounded all planes, that the magnitude of the reaction was shocking.
    3. She was driving to preschool. The reactions to the attacks were total confusion. Schools told parents to not pick up their kids from school, as there was already enough chaos, and having parents flood the school to pick up their would only add to it.
    8. My mothers most vivid memory of the day was at a birthday at McDonalds and I was wearing a Happy Meal box upside down on my head with the M shaped handle upside down over my eyes, like glasses.
    10. There was incessant news coverage of the planes crashing into the towers. There was not news to report, so the news coverage was very repetitive.
    12. America changed in the way that there was a strong backlash towards all Muslims, even though the attackers were a small splinter of all Muslims. People also started going to churches in droves. Other countries supported the US, but the American culture huddled together, and patriotism became a huge movement. When there were subsequent attacks on other countries, such as the attacks on Brussels and Paris, America was much more sympathetic because they had had similar event on their own soil. Security at airports became such a laser-focused issue and yet people accepted the new stringent security because they knew it was to prevent another tragedy.

    My reaction to this is that it was just kind of weird how little her personal life changed, but I supposed that it is sort of expected, because she was so far removed from the incident. She just went on with her daily life, which I think I didn’t expect because of all the people crying in the documentary, but she wasn’t close to the event, so really the only thing to do would be to go on with her life. I was also surprised that she didn’t panic because it seemed like it would be the thing to do, but I image it was more like hearing about the Boston Marathon bombing for us, like yeah, it was really terrible, but I wasn’t close to it or largely affected by it.
45. Griffin Kozlow May 21, 2017 at 11:36 pm

    What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    My name is Michelle Segal. I was 34 years old.

    What was your first memory when you heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings? Did you at first think it was an accident, or what it something worse? Why?
    I was driving with you, actually, to Gymboree, you were a baby, and you were in the backseat in your car seat, and I heard on the radio that an airplane crashed into one of the Twin Towers. Yes, I actually did think it was an accident, because why would you think anything else? But I thought it seemed absurd. And I was actually very concerned because I thought, “how many people died on the plane?” And I had the radio on and we parked, and we went into Gymboree. But when we got into the building, everyone in the Gymboree was staring at the TV, watching it, and kind of panic-stricken. And, so, I stood there holding you, and looking at the TV, and then they started saying, “It isn’t an accident. It looks like an act of terror.” And while I watched the TV holding you, (we never actually took the class), we watched the other plane hit the next tower. And they said everyone should go home. So I took you home.

    Have you ever been to New York City or Washington DC? How did that affect your reaction to the attacks?
    Yes, I’ve been to both places, and I can’t say that it affected my views of the places. I did think that it would be completely impossible to picture New York without the Twin Towers, and it was for a long time.

    Did you know anyone in the cities? If so, did you try to contact them to see if they were okay? What was the conversation like?
    Yes, I did know someone. My sister-in-law was in the city, and she was in the city. And I contacted her and she said that she was okay, that she was in the chaos of the city but had not been injured, um, and we just agreed to stay in touch. It was emotional.

    What were other people’s reactions like in the days after the attacks?
    (Crying) Um, I felt like everyone in the community that I was in, were walking around in a depressed state like they were underwater. It was like slow motion.

    How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?
    I think I was in a state of shock for a little while, and a little bit scared and suspicious, which thankfully wore off.

    Now that it has been almost 15 years since the attacks, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?
    Oh my God. Well, I don’t think that America has necessarily changed because of 9/11, but America is an uglier, more racist, more xenophobic, more nationalist, more closed off country and it’s not because of 9/11, it’s because of the President.

    But how do you think the country has changed as a direct result of the attacks?
    I think it spawned a lot of groups of people filled with hatred directed in the wrong place, and that’s probably why we ended up with this insane person running the country.

    My Reaction
    This interview really put everything about the attacks into perspective. Obviously, I already knew the attacks shocked the country, but I didn’t quite realize how much each and every person’s lives changed. It was an extremely powerful interview. In the middle, she began to cry as the memories came back to her, and it showed me just how emotional and traumatising that day was. When something unforgettable happens, it is burned in the brain forever. I thought it was fascinating that my mom remembered every single detail of what happened when and exactly where she was. It was almost as if it happened to her earlier that day. It is shocking to me that everyone has a story about that day. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing. My mom’s story was only one of the hundreds of millions that could be told, and each one would be different, yet just as detailed.
46. Ashley A May 21, 2017 at 11:40 pm

    What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?

    My name is Monday Akaba, I was 37 years old.

    What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?

    I was really shocked because we have never had such an incident in the United States. Initially, I thought it was an attack by a different country. Considering that we are living in a very hostile world where there is some kind of disagreement between countries, I just felt maybe there was an attack by a hostile nation.

    Where were you when the attacks happened?

    I was working, I was actually in a 25 story building (working for Ford) and I was on the 15th floor.

    So were you scared that you’re building could be hit?

    Definitely yes, I was very scared.

    Because you didn’t know when the next plane would hit or if another plane would come?

    That is correct. We (my co-workers) were not sure which state there
    were going to hit next.

    What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?

    Just like I was, they were kind of shocked and dumbfounded, not knowing what was going on. We were actually lost then.

    How did you find out about the attack?

    We had TV stations all around the offices so via the TV station

    Have you ever been to New York City or Washington D.C.? If so, how did that affect your reactions to the attacks?

    I have been to New York City before the attack and after the attack. Before the attack, New York City was very bubbling city were tourists wanted to visit. But after the attack, it became eminent in my thought that there was the possibility that something like that could happen again. I became very cautious while working in the city of New York. My reaction possibly would have been different if I had not been to New York before because I wouldn’t know the true magnitude of the amount of people that tour through New York every day. I believe that there was a major reduction in the tourism in New York.

    Did you know anyone in the cities? If so, did you try to contact them to see if they were o.k.? What was the conversation like?

    Yes, I have a brother who lives in the Bronx and I called to find out if they (he and his family) were ok and unaffected by the attack. They were shocked, they were scared also, not knowing what would happen next where they (the terrorists) were going next, knowing that this is a terrorist attack. But I just kept telling them to keep faith and be strong.

    What were other peoples’ reactions like in the days after the attacks?

    They were bitter and anger because of the nature of the attack and where the attack originated from.

    How do you think the Anti-Muslim sentiment that grew a lot during this time affected you if it did at all? Did your view of Muslims change because of this attack? How did this attack affect your Muslim friends in your point of view?

    Well, the Muslim friends I have felt discriminated upon, that they were being watched more than the average United States citizen.

    They are not happy about it at all. My views (on Muslims) weren’t changed, I never felt any different than the Muslim community around me. Just as we have a few bad Muslims, we have a few bad Christians.

    How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?

    No change really, just the consciousness that this type of thing could happen again was really heightened for me because the enemy is unknown, you don’t know where it is going to happen. You just have to be conscious of where you are and where you are going to.
    What was mom’s reaction?

    She was kind of scared then. She wasn’t a full-time worker then so just was just more scared for me.

    What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night?

    It was more of consoling the public, giving strength to what Americans stood for, freedom, democracy etc. It made me feel better and more secure.

    Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?

    The capture of how the planes were hitting the towers and the pentagon was remarkable (on the TV). And the reflection I had on what the people on the plane that landed in Pennsylvania went through. It was tough to grasp. Those thoughts can never leave me.

    Now that it’s been more 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?

    America has really changed. It became safer, due to the homeland security addition etc., there was more consciousness around the people also.

    For this interview on 9/11, I chose to discuss the topic with my father. Seeing as 9/11 took place when I was only 8 months old, this interview was an eye opener to how my family was personally affected by the events that occurred on September 11, 2001. Going into the interview, I wasn’t expecting my father to have much memory of the event since it didn’t happen in Michigan and he wasn’t in the position to be physically or mentally affected. However, while speaking to my Dad he had a faraway look, and seemed as though he had so much memory and thought. Also, the detail of his answers shows how recent and imbedded the events are to him and his thoughts.
47. Eric Ajluni May 22, 2017 at 12:50 am

    Sam Ajluni, Father, 29 at the time
    Q: What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings?

    A: I remember hearing 1 plane crashing, and was confused as to whether it was an accident or not because only one had been hit.

    Q: Where were you when the attacks happened? What were other peoples’ reactions to the attacks?

    A: I was at my job at the Wayne State Psychiatric and I heard people talking about it as the news was on TV. Everyone around me was shocked, sad, upset, and confused over what had happened. Many thought it was an accident, but as soon as the second one hit along with the Pentagon everyone knew it was an attack and more panic broke out. There was a lot of speculation about where the 4th plane was headed, some said the White House, others the Washington Monument.

    Q: Could you describe your most vivid memory of that day, 9/11?

    A: I was standing with my coworkers, all watching the TV when we saw the second plane hit the tower. This stuck out in my mind because of how unbelievable it was to see. Not only that, but this ended the debate of if it was an accident or not because everyone knew this was an attack. Also, when we were watching after and saw the tower crumble to the ground.

    Q: Have you ever been to New York City or Washington D.C.? If so, how did that affect your reactions to the attacks?  If not, how did the attacks alter / change your views of the cities and their inhabitants?

    A: Yes, I have been to NYC, and this affected my outlook on the attack as it brought it closer to home because only a couple months earlier our family had vacationed there and I stood atop the World Trade center itself.

    Q: Did you know anyone in the city or building during the attack?

    A: I did but no one very close, a good friend of mine’s cousin who I had met was working in the financial area of the tower, but he escaped down the fire escape. I did not know he was involved in the attack until many months later.

    Q: How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?

    A: For us, it definitely made flying on airplanes a lot scarier, especially as a family who loved traveling. It didn’t stop many people but it definitely made everyone a lot more cautious.

    Q: What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?

    A: The main thing to really describe it was that it was everywhere. All the news sources you can think of were covering it for weeks nonstop following the attack. The main negative of this were many news sources jumping to conclusions over the details of the attack.

    Q: Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day?

    A: America has become far more fearful and cautious because of it, and something like airport security has become way more secure. Americans overall do not feel as safe and isolated from attacks as they did before the attack.

    My reaction to the interview was pretty much as expected, though of course there isn’t a substitute for being in that kind of situation and experiencing your country go crazy over an event like that. America would never be the same after the attack, as something like this was truly unprecedented in our country. Terrorism was now in the forefront of issues and would stay there until current day. Things like media and security within America would forever be changed. Personally I was too young to remember the attack, but its implications changed the country I live in today. If in the future I go to NYC and visit the New World Trade Center tower that is built where the original two fell, having background knowledge on what occurred in that spot and what it looked like would be eye-opening.
48. Zacharie Chentouf May 22, 2017 at 7:14 am

    1. What is your name? How old were you on 9/11?
    My name is Lamia Chentouf. I was 32 years old.

    2. What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?
    My first memory of when I first heard about the attacks was at the hospital. I had just given birth to my son, Zacharie Chentouf, two days before, as he was sleeping in my arms at the time of the attacks. I was happy at the moment, the TV was on, I was watching a game show, as it suddenly stopped. There was a flash report with a journalist saying something horrible was happening in New York. I remember that everybody around me- the nurses, the doctors, my mom, Zacharie’s grandmother-froze. We were all stunned watching the plane crashing into the World Trade Center. There were huge flames, it was horrible. People were screaming, terrorized. Then the other plane hit the other World Trade Center, it was unbelievable. Everybody was shocked, the room silent, even when Zacharie woke up who stayed silent, as if he could sense something was wrong. No one knew what was happening. I immediately though it was something that was worse than an accident because I could see the World Trade Center was being targeted, a huge American symbol, and the plane made no move to avoid the crash or collision. The second plane confirmed my suspicions. I immediately thought that terrorists had done this because I had myself fled my country in my early 20s, Algeria, because of terrorist bombings and gunfire during the day and at night in the capital city, Algiers. I thought these were Islamic terrorists because these attacks reminded me of the Islamic terrorists in my own country, the same barbarism.

    3. What were other peoples’ reactions like in the days after the attacks?
    People were down, terrified, shocked, scared, extremely scared. People had the feeling that something huge had shaken the world, that everything had changed, almost apocalyptic, as if they couldn’t feel safe again. My mom was with me in Paris, where I lived, having just given birth, and when I went to the stores to buy groceries, it was a very unusual atmosphere; people weren’t smiling as nearly as often in a city as busy as Paris, less conversations took place around me, the baker did not ask me the usual questions when I went to the usual bakery I went to, too shaken up. These are some of the many ways that people’s behaviors changed during this time. I felt things starting to return to normal in Paris, not even on U.S. soil, in a month after the attacks, as people knew all the Western World was targeted.

    4. What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?
    In France, the main saying was “Nous sommes tous Américains”, translating to We are all Americans, all over the media. Next, the media portrayed the way that Al-Qadea, its leader being Osama Ben Laden, was declaring war especially the United States, but also against all Western nations. The media displaying the number of victims from these attacks was a first for the world. The media talked a lot about the bravery of the firefighters that entered the World Trade Center to save people, despite the fact that many would die as the World Trade Centers would collapse. The media promoted unity and solidarity. In France, the media focused more on the attacks done on the Twin Towers because of the number of civilians living there, trying to understand what possibly could have motivated these people to do this, but the media did cover everything, including the Pentagon being hit and also the plane crashing in a field close to the White House. The bravery of the passengers was put to the forefront. The media went in depth and researched Al-Qadea, this organization that was not very well known. They discovered that there were training camps in Afghanistan, and that people were willing to sacrifice themselves in this war against the United States. These people were indoctrinated, which is really when we began to see anti-Muslim sentiments.

    5. Were you personally affected by the anti-Muslim sentiments that started being felt?
    Coming from a Muslim country, despite not practicing the religion myself after my childhood, personally, I wasn’t affected by the anti-Muslim sentiments and did not feel discriminated against in Paris. I did not feel that people discriminated against me for the things that these Islamic fundamentalists did. I heard stories in my family around me. For example, my cousin was treated differently at work in Paris, people seemed colder, and she felt the behavior of her colleagues changing toward her. A friend of mine was told to go back to Algeria where she belonged.

    6. Now that it’s been almost 15 years since the attack, how do you think America has changed since that day? Why?
    I cannot say much on this topic because I had never been to America before the attacks, going there only six years after the attacks.

    7. How do you think the world changed since that day?
    There is now increased airport security; it feels much safer now to travel, but it also made you feel much more suspicious of people around you. I think the world has changed for the worst because the divisions between the different cultures, religions, have grown wider and wider. It is like having traveled back to the Dark Ages with the crusades, different civilizations at war. Today, we see that many more attacks such on Brussels, Paris, Nice, Frankfurt are turning many people hateful of Islam when most Muslims completely disagree with the actions taken by these Islam radicals and fundamentalists.

    This interview was definitely eye opening for me. It demonstrates to me that different cultures and people from different religions were affected much differently by 9/11, and that everyone was at a different place and time when hearing about the attacks. It’s also interesting and extremely disappointing to see that 9/11 should have been a moment of solidarity for all religions, all cultures, all people, all humans who want the best for humanity, instead created divides between people who want peace, and security, just because people ended up confusing Muslims with Islam radicals and fundamentalists. It is also interesting to see that countries in the Western world always receive more attention for the media just because attacks on these countries hit closer to home, like “Je suis Charlie” or “We are Paris” for attacks on France. Attacks on Syria, Boko Haram in Africa, or students being kidnapped in South America rarely receive such sayings of solidarity. I also wonder what this means for me, being born two days before 9/11, and how my life will turn out. Hopefully it is a sign that the rifts that exist in this world between different religions and cultures, walls, should be broken down, bridges to replace them, and that I can help do that.
49. Caitlyn Moore May 22, 2017 at 10:03 am

    What is your name?
    “ Annie Marie Moore, I’m your mother.”

    Where were you and how old were you when these attacks occurred?
    “I was 34 years old and I was at Henry Ford High School teaching Algebra 1 to ninth graders.”

    What is your very first memory of when you heard of the attacks?
    “I remember being shocked and in disbelief, especially when the attacks continued.”

    What kind of conclusions did you jump to when you heard of the attack? Were they negative or positive?

    “As you know I’m terrified of any type of violence so I immediately thought we were going to war, you were an infant and your sister was about three so I called your father to get you from day care because I wanted you both at home.”

    What were other people’s reactions to the attacks?

    “Student’s parents kept coming to the school to pick them up because they were worried and the phones were ringing off of the hook. One of my colleague’s family lived in New York so she was worried sick; crying and calling them, I remember her husband coming to calm her down, her family was okay she found out a couple hours later.”

    What do you remember about the airports and travel
    after the attack?

    “My best friend and your aunt Paula was in D.C. at the time, she was stuck for days and I had to take her classes at Henry Ford for the rest of the week. I called her immediately and stayed on the phone until I was allowed to leave work. She was scared to leave the hotel and I was scared for her. I remember her saying her flight back home she couldn’t sleep or relax a wink, she came home safely that weekend though Thank God.”

    During this interview with my mother she got quite emotional speaking about my Aunt being in D.C. and how scared she was for her. I personally cried listening to her. The fear in her voice sounded as if she was just getting the news of 9/11 while she was telling me about it. I can’t imagine and don’t want to imagine her worry and fear for my Aunt since she was in the Nation’s capital. I was also surprised to know that she had my dad go get us from day care, my mother isn’t the type of person to be fearful but I guess she was that day especially with my aunt being out of town. I also couldn’t believe that she thought we were going to war, she assumed the worst when she’s usually so positive.
50. Ian Birley May 22, 2017 at 10:13 am

    What is your name and how old were you when the attacks happened?

    Sheila Birley (my mother), just turned 32 when the attacks happened.

    2. What is your first memory of when you first heard about the attacks? What kind of conclusions did you come to about the planes crashing into the buildings (did you at first think it was an accident or was it something worse)? Why?

    I was staying at home on maternity leave becauae you were due in a week. I remember that I was just watching the morning news. At first I didn’t know what to think, people were saying it could be an accident, but I just wasn’t sure. Once the second plane hit, though, it became quite clear.

    3. How did life change for you in the immediate aftermath of the attacks?

    Well, it didn’t really change, everyone in our family was just a bit shocked. A week later when you were born, it just made everyone happy and get over the trauma.

    4. What do you remember of the media coverage of the attacks?

    I remember… just there were a lot of heroes. There were lots of stories about the firefighters that gave their lives. I also remember the phone calls of loved ones talking for the last time over the phone. Also the bravery of the people on the plane that crashed in the middle of nowhere.

    5. What did you think of President Bush’s address later that night? (Show them the transcript here or video below.)

    Well, I remember that he sort of brought the nation together for that one day, but then just a couple days later he had us believing there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We went into a dumb war that wasn’t really about the WMDs, it was about the oil.

    Reaction

    It really is hard to imagine the shock Americans felt on that Tuesday morning almost sixteen years ago. America just became a different country. There is just way more apparent security today then there was before these attacks. It is this weird disconnect because of the environment I grew up in. That said, I still get very distraught when I think about the attacks. I just never felt the shock of it for myself. There isn’t really anyone in my life easily accessible that was living in New York in 2001. I can really only imagine what my family would be like if we lost someone in the attacks.