Author Spotlight
Celia Condon
It was a clear day in September. A gentle wind rippled the American flag outside of East. The summer heat hadn’t yet left the air, so then-sophomore Alex Abnos broke a sweat as he walked into his first hour gym class.
7:50 a.m. CDT. A few minutes after the class settled in, Abnos started his workout with a warm-up on the bench press. He counted his reps.
One, two, three.
Abnos overheard his gym coach in the hallway speaking with another teacher about something in the news — he could only half understand what they were saying as he lay on his back. Besides, it sounded too bizarre to be true. He ignored it.
“Some idiot just crashed a plane into the World Trade Center.”
Four, five, six.
Current East parent Dan Gould was working at Aquila, a trading company located in downtown Kansas City, Mo. Aquila worked closely with a company called Spark, which had one location in Dallas and another at the World Trade Center. The companies communicated via Squawk Box, a speaker-like telephone. At 7:56 a.m. CDT, both Dallas and Kansas City lost connection with those in New York City. Completely, and for good.
8:46 a.m. Another current East parent Jill Holzbeierlein wore high heels when she stepped out of the Union Square subway station in New York City. She was seven months pregnant, and on the way to her job at Gap. Looking up, she could see a smoky mess in the sky and the butt end of a commercial airplane sticking out the side of a building. The World Trade Center had just been hit.
9:10 a.m. in New York City. Current East parent Jill Gaikowski was standing in an office building elevator on 42nd street with a few coworkers. She was late because the subway had stopped abruptly for 30 minutes on her way over. She didn’t know why.
“‘I just heard that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center,’ someone in the elevator said,” Gaikowski remembers. “We said ‘Yeah, funny joke.’”
Although headlines about the attack only appear once every 365 days now, those alive that day still remember their every move, minute by minute. Even 20 years later, they remember the day as if the dust from the crash is still hanging in the air.
On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists from al-Qaeda, an Islamic multinational organization, hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two of the planes were deliberately flown into the top floors of the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center. The third plane crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. After learning about the other attacks, passengers on the fourth hijacked plane — Flight 93 — fought back, and the plane crashed into an empty field in western Pennsylvania, about 20 minutes by air from Washington, D.C.
Although everyone across America had a unique experience that morning, there was one universal feeling according to Holzbeierlein: fear. And that feeling can come rushing back at just a thought for many involved, especially for those who were in New York.
“You could hear all of New York City gasp, [the moment the second plane hit],” Holzbeierlein remembers. “Nobody could believe it was happening.”
The moment Holzbeierlein realized the reality of the situation, she and her coworkers did all they could do: walk. The whole city was trying to get away from the towers at the south tip of the island.
“I went to the Footlocker across the street, and they just gave me a pair of tennis shoes,” Holzbeierlein said. “Every traffic pattern was going south. The subways were shut down. On the streets it was emergency vehicle, fire truck, emergency vehicle, cop car. Everything was going south except the civilians. The whole city was walking home.”
On the other side of the island, Gaikowski was walking with the same goal: get home and get safe. The citizens of New York walked for hours, and some for days. Many couldn’t get their hands on a working telephone for up to a week, leaving loved ones in the dark, and terrified.
According to Gaikowski, New York was in a condition it had never been in during the weeks and months that followed the attack. The damage was like no other and the rubble that needed cleaning seemed to never end. It tooks weeks.
But even all that fixing couldn’t make up for the damage it caused to people. Rubble and ash can be swept away, but the memories stuck. Hospitals prepared for an overflow of patients, but in the end, the hospitals went largely unused. There were little to no survivors from the Twin Towers to be treated.
2,996 lives were taken that morning.
However, New York changed in other ways in the months after September. In more unexpected ways.
“It was the best of New York people that I’ve ever, ever, ever seen,” Gaikowski recalls. “I mean, you’d see firemen who had been down at the trade center site for days, and they had taken a bus back up town and when they would get off the bus, people would run up and just hug them. I wish the whole world would be like that all the time.”
Today, those who were alive on 9/11 think of the ways the attack still affects Americans today. The fateful day set off a 20-year reign of U.S. military troops in Afghanistan in attempt to protect the Afghan citizens from terrorist groups — one of which caused the 9/11 attacks. But now, the U.S. has decided to withdraw, and are currently evacuating the country. The troops will be completely out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021. Former Air Force Captain and East parent Steve Marin feels for troops and Afghan people at this intersection of events.
“I think about the lives of the people that we lost on 9/11, and then now,” Marin said. “The Americans, the Afghan civilians… When it happened we began to recognize our place in the world, and we still are to this day.”
Holzbeierlein agrees that the attack caused somewhat of an awakening in America that remains true today.
“No one ever thought that could even potentially happen, and it was a realization,” Holzbeierlein said. “We know that we’re not invincible, and we’re more vigilant.”
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