Remembering 9/11: 11 Years Later

Saturday, 29 September 2012 17:53 Written by  Diamond C. Latchison

September 11, 2012 marked the 11th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. All across the nation, people remembered the victims who passed away on that day, their families, and their own personal stories of where they were on that tragic day.

I did the same. I remember I was in the third grade, seven or eight years old. My mom was getting my sister and I ready for school while my dad headed off to work early. My sister was in our room while my mom was doing my hair, and we were watching the news and having a discussion at the same time. All of a sudden, we saw a plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center on CNN and we stopped talking. I asked my mother “what movie are we watching? And, since when does CNN show movies?” It didn’t seem real. Then, the words “Breaking News!” ran across the bottom of the TV screen. Like any other kid, I had a lot of questions. However, my mother kept quiet until another plane hit the south tower. Soon after the second hit,both towers began to fall.

As we saw people flying out of the towers and people on the streets running, fleeing the scene, my mother and I both jumped up and screamed “Oh my God!” As my sister came running into the room wondering what was going on, she started asking the same questions. We didn’t have an answer for her. We were too shocked to speak. All we could do was cry.

I remember it so vividly. My father called to see if we were witnessing the tragedy. He was just as shocked as we were. While we were talking to him, we saw the Pentagon get hit. It all resembled a movie like Independence Day or Apocalypse Now. It was unreal. I don’t remember if we went to school that day but I knew the days to come would never be the same.Never would I have thought that I would see something so catastrophic in my lifetime. Now, it’s 11 years later. It seems like that day is still a painful memory for everyone, some more than others. But, even despite all that happened, I think it made this country much closer than what it was before, and it’s sad that thousands of lives had to be taken for us to see that. To the victims’ families and to the police officers and firefighters, on duty and off, deceased or living, thank you for what you’ve done and what you continue to do. God Bless!


Diamond C. Latchison

Diamond C. Latchison

Diamond C. Latchison, an intern at GMO, attends school at Columbia College Chicago. She majors in magazine journalism with a minor in creative nonfiction writing. In her spare time, the St. Louis-native enjoys writing stories and poetry and reading books and magazines.

She can be contacted at dlatchison011@gmail.com

Follow her on Twitter: @dlatchison011