Twelve years ago, terrorists attacked the twin towers of the World Trade Center, flew a third plane into the Pentagon, and crashed another in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. On the anniversary of that day, West staff recount their experiences and impressions of that day.

“As a citizen, you don’t think it would happen.”
-Chad Mateske, Social Studies

“It’s crazy that they got us in our own country.”
-Nick Becker, Counselor

“We’ve got it pretty good, way better than a majority of the world. Let’s face it, we’ve got four sides; two of them are water and one of them is Canada…”
-Tom Norstrem, English

“I can’t imagine the fear those people had – in the towers, in the plane – trapped like that.”
-Betty Marks, Administrative Assistant

“There’s a lot of weapons. There’s a lot of hate. There’re a lot of smart people using their intelligence for bad reasons.”
-Nick Becker, Counselor

“Once it became clear that what happened was a terrorist attack, we tried to make sure that people were calm and that they had accurate info, and that they had a place to talk about it.”
-Matthew Byers, Associate Principal, speaking of his experiences as Dean of Pius High School on 9/11/2001

“The evening of 9/11, no one was on the road. There wasn’t a single airplane in the sky. It was a gorgeous blue sky.”
-Betty Marks, Administrative Assistant

“I am willing to sacrifice some freedoms for the safety of my family.”
-Tom Schneider, Science

“It was almost hard to conceive the fact that it was actually happening, real time, while you were watching it. You would see people running down the streets with this cloud almost chasing them down the street, and it was moving faster than they could move, so the cloud would envelop them, and they would just disappear into this cloud of white dust. You would see photos later of people coming out of the cloud and they were just coated – they looked like almost ghosts – it was almost like watching a disaster movie, but it was real.
-Bonnie Harris, Chemistry

“Dropping bombs is one thing, but to use a plane full of people…”
-Betty Marks, Administrative Assistant

“When people anywhere are upset, frustrated, and angry, they have to be taken seriously. They can’t be blown off.”
-Matthew Byers, Associate Principal

“I used to think that we, everyone around the world, were in this whole life thing together, but the attacks sharpened the global boundaries; this is still something I fight with internally.”
-Tom Norstrem, English

“There were caravans put together of people from other states volunteering to go help – people helping to dig, people helping to man churches in the area to give out water, to give out food – everybody sort of wanted to do something. They wanted to help what was going on in New York and people were looking for ways to do it.”
-Bonnie Harris, Chemistry

“People during 9/11 thought Muslims were crazy people, that younger terrorists would look up to these guys, and that this would promote more violence.”
-Bill Lund, Science

“It worries me that we are getting to a point that people won’t remember 9/11 personally and will only know it from seeing the replays of it.”
-Chad Mateske, Social Studies

“I think the events of 9/11 will be a touchstone in American history. People in the future may not understand the events the same way people do now, but 9/11 won’t be forgotten.”
-Matthew Byers, Associate Principal

“We’re not done with 9/11 yet. We’re still in the countries we went into. The story isn’t finished. But I think it will always be remembered.”
-Nick Becker, Counselor