Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?

Remembering 9/11

Do you rmember the Alan Jackson song, Where Were You (When the World Stoped Turning)?

When that song began playing on the radio in the months following September 11, 2001, its question resonated with millions of Americans. We knew where we had been when we first heard the news.

Like so many events throughout American history, 9/11 can be remembered through stories—the stories of the families who lost loved ones, the first responders who rushed toward danger, the survivors who escaped, and ordinary Americans far from New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania who watched the events unfold.

Even those of us in Kansas have our stories.

In 2001, I was the librarian and technology coordinator at Nemaha Valley High School. During first period that Tuesday morning, I had gone to the school office for some now-forgotten reason. While I was there, one of the secretaries mentioned hearing something on the radio about an attack in New York City.

I returned to the library and moved a television—probably a 32-inch model—on its cart into the middle of the room. I connected it to Cablevision and turned to CNN.

Before long, the library began filling with students and teachers.

They sat quietly, watching the television as smoke poured from the World Trade Center.

My principal stopped by and wondered whether we should move everyone to the gym, where more students could watch. I hesitated. Getting a television connected to a working cable connection in the gym would take time, and events were unfolding quickly. We decided to remain in the library.

When the bell rang ending first period, I sent the students on to their next classes.

It wasn't long before the library began filling again.

Throughout that morning, we watched history unfold in real time.

At some point, we learned that all commercial air traffic across the United States had been grounded. That announcement made the events suddenly more personal for some of our students. Their parents had traveled to California for the Kansas State University football game and were supposed to fly home that day. Now, no one knew when—or how—they would get home.

We were hundreds of miles from the sites of the attacks, sitting in a high school library in northeast Kansas. Yet, like people across the country, we were connected by what we were seeing on that television screen.

Years later, many of the details of that morning have faded. I don't remember why I had gone to the office. I don't remember exactly who was sitting in the library or when each new piece of information reached us.

But I remember that television on its cart.

I remember the library filling with students and teachers.

I remember the quiet.

And I remember the uncertainty as we tried to understand what we were witnessing.

So when Alan Jackson asked, Where were you when the world stopped turning?, I knew my answer.

I was in the library at Nemaha Valley High School, surrounded by students and teachers, watching a television on a cart as a day that had begun like any other became a day none of us would ever forget.