By Marley Malenfant/feature editor
NE student Gina Reese walked into Eckerd’s Pharmacy in Breckenridge, Texas, for another normal workday. Fifteen minutes into her shift, Reese got a call from her boss. He said the World Trade Center towers had collapsed.
“Our disoriented manager called and said, ‘Close the store down!’” she said. “A customer came in like, ‘Oh my gosh, the towers just fell.’”
On the way home, Reese noticed that for a small town, the lines were long at the gas station and the grocery stores.
“The rest of the day we were glued to the TV,” she said.
Students and faculty experienced Sept. 11, 2001, in different ways and different places, but for all of them, the day is hard to forget.
SE student Hannah Mardis was in elementary school at the time. She recalled her mom explaining the turmoil on TV. She said growing up, she disliked what she thought Arabs stood for.
“I despised the Arabic culture,” she said. “I was ignorant of the history and the culture. I read books and look up the history now.”
SE student Zahrah Syed said her mom called and told her to stay home during the attacks. She also feared her uncle, who was working in New York City, could be harmed.
“I felt it was like a movie when I first saw it,” she said. “My uncle worked in New York, and he was stuck in the city.”
NW and TR student Elvis Martinez said the attacks have influenced the way people travel.
“Since 9/11, everything has changed,” he said. “At first we were steady, we didn’t have no problems. We’re having more security, which I think is good, but it’s really impacted everybody.”
TR student Adrian Vasquez questioned how the hijackers could do something so devastating.
“I think the only people who could answer the questions would be the people that did it,” he said. “It’s just a bad day for us.”
NW student Kathryn Jones worked valet parking at the Renaissance hotel in downtown Fort Worth. A woman pulled up and informed Jones that the towers fell. Once she got the news, she ran in the lobby with her co-workers.
Jones said the attacks affected her job at the hotel.
“We had more bomb threats at the hotel and less hours at work,” she said. “They actually cut valet jobs completely, so we were left without a job.”
SE computer science associate professor Ernie Gines, who’s from New York, said he was concerned about his family during the attack. His brother, who worked in the city, was safe but some of his friends weren’t so fortunate.
“My brother worked for a plumbing union in New York,” he said. “He lost some co-workers in the towers. He doesn’t like to bring it up.”
Vietnam veteran Robin Rhyand, who works in the South Campus disabilities support services office, was livid and screaming at her television when the planes hit the towers. Though she said a lot has changed since that day, America still has the right priorities.
“9/11 has made our country different, but I still think we value freedom and liberty,” she said.
