Twelve years ago, four passenger planes were hijacked by an Islamist terrorist group known as al-Qaeda. Two of the planes crashed into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, and one was flown into the Pentagon. The last plane, targeted for Washington D.C., crashed in a field more than a hundred miles away. Almost 3,000 lives were lost, 343 of whom were firefighters and 60 of whom were officers.

Today marks the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as people all over the country remember and honor those lost in the tragedy. The school paid its respect by flying the flag in the quad at half-mast, which was lowered by ASB Vice President Sahithya Prakash (12).

“To me, I felt like by doing that, we as a community are honoring the veterans and soldiers of 9/11,” she said.

English teacher John Docherty, who was working at a gas company in Texas and had lost one of his classmates in the tragedy, also believes in the importance of showing respect and recalls the events of the day clearly.

“I remember showing up for work at about 8:00, and I had to walk past gas control. The usual TV screens that had the pipeline information were tuned to CNN, and I wondered why the engineers were not paying attention to the gas lines, “ he said. “They were watching the planes and the buildings coming down.”

Like Docherty, math teacher Mary Mortlock, felt the impacts of 9/11 but had a much closer experience to the events. Her husband and her son were both in Washington D.C. on that day, and she remembers receiving a call from her son asking where his father was.

“He told me to turn on the news, and my first reaction was, ‘Get home as fast as you can.’ I went to meet my husband at the train station, and that was the thing that really struck me. There was absolute silence,” she said. “We had lots of friends who worked at the Pentagon, and we waited for them to come home – some did, and some didn’t.”

Most students at the Upper School, who were one to six years old at the time of the 2001 tragedy, have very little recollection of the events.

“I don’t remember any of it, but it’s a very solemn reminder about how inhuman people can be,” Jerry Shen (12) said

Vienna Wang (9), who was only one year old, adds that “9/11 is a date to be remembered not only because of all the people sacrificed, but also because it brought out the best in us and made us even more determined to stop terrorists.”

Students and staff members, whether or not they remember the events, all paid tribute to the victims of the attacks and recognized the significance of the date.