Towers Falling, 2001, Joel Rohlf

From MemoryArchive

Who: Joel Rohlf
What: The attack on 9/11/2001
When: 9/11/2001
Where: Iowa City, Iowa

On that bright, September day, I strolled across campus going from my early discussion to a lecture of 750 students, Introduction to American Politics. I was young, naïve, and in my mind invincible, but then again so was most of America with respect the events that were swirling around us. When the professor announced that we would not be having class because of an attack on the World Trade Center in New York, I was in utter disbelief. In fact, I thought for a brief moment that he was merely setting the stage for a discussion on executive war time power, which was the topic we were studying at the time. However, it quickly became clear that this was not a hypothetical. On the bus ride back to my dorm room rumors quickly swirled about what was taking place in New York and Washington, though I was not somewhat skeptical about what was going on. Things like that simply don’t happen in America, the last pervious attack was almost sixty year before and prior to that almost two centuries. Nothing sunk in until I got back to my room and I saw the planes striking the Towers and Pentagon on television. The rest of the day is simply a blur filled with worry about the future both immediate and long term, questions about how this could happen, and sorrow over the loss many in the United States had suffered.