“American Airlines Flight 11 had left Logan Airport in Boston and was en route to Los Angeles,” the Associated Press dispatch reported. The Federal Aviation Administration indicated that the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 out of Logan Airport had gained control of the flight over Gardner’s airspace. More from Mike Richard: Once again, someone has put our columnist's good name in 'Jeopardy'Ī few days later, Gardner would make the national news. We kept vigil by our television, so reminiscent of the bleak weekend back in November of 1963 when our country experienced all of the details of the Kennedy assassination on our black and white sets. Then I realized the empty holes that many other families were experiencing that night, having lost one or more of their own members to the terrorist attack. However, we had dropped our son, Casey, off at Providence College just prior to Labor Day, and having that void in the family felt like an empty hole to me.
DAY OF INFAMY CRASHING FULL
Upon arriving home that evening, I had the urge to just burrow into my living room chair and gather the family around me to take in the full scope of what happened that day. Suddenly, everyone on the practice field froze in place and looked skyward as a medical helicopter from UMass Memorial zipped above toward its customary landing spot on the field at nearby Mount Wachusett Community College.Īll air travel had been grounded that day, and the appearance of the emergency Medivac caused an unexplained panic among everyone on the ground.Īirports, IDs, privacy: Here's what changed after 9/11 that probably now seems normal No doubt, anyone else who can recall that day and their own experiences in the workplace can relate.Īfter school, the football team practiced, half-heartedly going the motions in preparation for Friday night’s game at Fitchburg. It was quite impossible to try to get high school kids in my English class to focus on their studies. The rest of the day went by in a blur with a pall cast over the assembled student body who ambled through the school session in a trance-like existence.
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The bell ending the second period and heralded the beginning of homeroom – which occurred on Tuesdays around 9:30 – snapped us back into reality.īefore long, the students were made aware of the terrorist attacks on our country, as news began to filter in about another plane crashing into the Pentagon and a fourth plane downed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.Īs I stood before a room full of freshmen – my daughter, Lindsey, among them – who were in their second full week of high school, it was nearly impossible to attempt to assuage their emotions of fear and uncertainty.įor generations, students have looked to their teachers in the quest of getting right answers.
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We quickly realized this was no accident.
DAY OF INFAMY CRASHING TV
However, if the skies over New York were as bright and clear as those over Gardner, that couldn’t have been the cause.Īll of a sudden, the room echoed a collective gasp as the TV showed a second airplane crashing into the other Twin Tower.
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My mind quickly flashed back to an event I had read about from 1945, when a B-25 Mitchell bomber flew into the Empire State Building the pilot misjudging his whereabouts in a heavy fog. It seemed as though an airplane had struck the World Trade Center.