The Day the World Stopped

By: Nic Yonter

Andrew Hostler

Dr. Carol Coburn

Gina Scaletty

      The United States of America stood still. Flames arose from two buildings. Two monumental buildings. It was the World Trade Center. Everyone that was alive at the time of the bombing of these two buildings has a story. Each story is unique, but each story is similar because it is based around this horrifying event. This is known as 9/11.
     September 11, 2001 was a day like any other. The sun was up and every day routines were taking place. Everyone has a story of this day that was anything but normal.
     “I woke up, played some video games, and then I turned on the TV. I really didn’t know what was going on. I saw that something had happened. I went to school, and when I got there, my friends started telling me what happened. I found out my teacher was in New York at the time, and she couldn’t get a flight out. The rest of the day was traumatic. I couldn’t believe why the hell someone would do that,” said Andrew Hostler. “How could this happen with such a great country? It was terrible. It really was.”
     Andrew Hostler plays football at Avila University and was in 5th grade when the crash happened.
     “I had a religious history class at 9:30. I was sitting in my office and a faculty member said ‘Have you had your radio on?’ I told her no. She said ‘Well you better turn it on.’ I didn’t know what she was talking about at the time. I turned it on and heard what was going on. I wasn’t able to see anything until I got home later that day,” said Carol Coburn. “There was no way to ignore it. Some people did, they just went about their lesson plans. It was better for me to use it as a teaching tool. The best thing I could do was let them process it all. It was stunning in every way.”
     Carol Coburn is a professor at Avila University. She is a religious studies teacher. Coburn said that the Kennedy assassination was similar to the shock of 9/11.
     “I was in class that day. It was messed up for people to just come and kill our civilians when we hadn’t really done anything to deserve that,” said Gina Scaletty.
     Scaletty is a cheerleader at Avila University.
Every year that passes, the sting lessons a little bit. But for many people, 11 years is not enough time to clear their heads and forgive the parties involved.
     “It changed how I looked at those types of people. Naturally, you become a bit suspicious. I’m not disrespectful toward them, but I do look at them differently,” said Hostler.
     “I probably do look upon people of that ethnicity differently, subconsciously. I don’t look down on them; I just look at them differently. I don’t associate anyone who is Muslim to be a terrorist,” said Scaletty.
But not everyone’s thought process has changed after the plane hijack.
     “There are zealots in every religious tradition. A lot of people will kill other religions in the name of their god. To me, it was a group of extremists. I was able to put it in that type of context. As a historian, you would be able to go back and find so many examples throughout history of different groups and the fanatics that surface,” said Coburn.
     After the smoke had cleared and the sirens had ceased, it was deathly silent. Americans tried to make sense of what had happened and tried to find a way to move on from the day the world stopped.