Laura Irwin
Centurion Staff
For our grandparents it was Pearl Harbor.
For our parents it was the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
For our generation, knowing where you were the morning of Sept.11, 2001 will be a question posed throughout our lifetime.
On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four planes with the intent to crash them.
One flight ended in the Pentagon, another in a field in Pennsylvania and two others in the World Trade Center.
Now, five years later, local students remember what they were doing when they heard the news.
Jill Schieren, 20, a liberal arts major from Yardley was in her sophomore year at Pennsbury High School in English class when, against the principal’s orders, her teacher wheeled in a TV and broke the news to the class.
“I was in shock. I certainly didn’t understand the implications. Now I feel that our nation handled the situation in the best way, retaliation. It’s our best scenario and I advocate the war,” said Schieren.
She stayed glued to the news on television in that room for the rest of the school day. All the while, parents walked into classrooms taking their children home.
Eric Fierte, 18, a criminal justice major from Bensalem was only 13 at the time. Home from school due to a Bensalem School District strike, he was watching MTV.
The network interrupted its usual programs to announce what had happened.
Fierte said he “didn’t know or understand what was happening.”
Fierte’s friend Matt Goldstein, 18, a computer science major also from Bensalem, was overcome by confusion.
Both teenagers waited anxiously for their parents to come home that day, to comfort and explain.
“It sucks. It’s a tragedy for people who were involved, touched by the situation. But people can’t do anything now but remember,” said Fierte.
Some were angered, some saddened. There were those who could only listen and wait.
Brian Suppin, 23, an operations management major from Langhorne, was at first confused but “later on I realized the magnitude of the situation. We were attacked in our own country. Now we are going to war.”
What’s important five years later is that we never forget how we were affected that morning.
The concerns we felt, the tears we shed. Under such strain, as a country we were united, stronger for moving forward. Flags draped outside every house, we were hurt; but we stood proud.