Remembering 9/11, an Indiana Teacher’s Perspective — by John Bolinger

As 9/11 creeps up, DC, where I live, and NYC, are under terrorist watch, for car and truck bombs…, and I am a little nervous. Just came back from a bike ride, where I saw police protection at the Washington Monument, and all over the city, — unobtrusive, but present — reminding me of 9/ll. DC is such a small city, that I could see the Pentagon’s smoke, from my office in DC, a half a mile from my home; at the time, we thought that the Smithsonian buildings were on fire as well. I’ve been curious about what people who live in ‘safe states’ remember about 9/11; I asked John for his recollections. At the time, John was still teaching high school, in northwest Indiana. I was curious about his students reactions…and if everyone felt safe there. Below is John’s story. — Annie

On that Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001 after nine o’clock during second period (my conference hour), I was busy grading a set of French quizzes from first period, having a mug of hot chocolate, and listening to WFMT, my favorite Chicago radio station.  My radio was an old wooden Zenith from 1955, but the tone and reception were excellent.  It was a sunny day that allowed light to flood my classroom from the south wall of windows that overlooked the track and football field.  The only other sound was that of chalk writing on the blackboard next door in Mr. Maicher’s business class.  My radio continued to transmit music, the last selection being Aaron Copland’s orchestral film music for OUR TOWN by Thornton Wilder.  Then suddenly the world changed in a matter of moments by that unforgettable emergency announcement.

Almost at the same time, the announcer on the radio and our school principal over the public address system spoke of an airplane smashing into the side of one of the Twin Towers in the financial district of New York City.  The meaning of this news item didn’t register in my brain right away.  The horror of the news was so extreme, that I was actually numbed into believing briefly that some kind of drama was being played out just to see if we were awake.  The radio offered no visual images, so my mind had to fill in the pictures to go along with the spoken words.  Just as the sharp reality of the first crash began to cut into my psyche, the second announcement came of the second plane slicing through the other tower.  By this time Mr. Maicher, the business teacher was standing in my doorway with a look of perplexity and disbelief, putting both his hands in the air in a questioning gesture.  He froze in that position for at least a whole minute and looked like an exhibit from Madame Tussaud’s.

When the bell rang signaling the beginning of third period, I stood in the hallway, as I always did between classes, to see and hear hundreds of students and teachers talking in fear and disbelief of the recent events.  My third period English class was hyper that morning, wanting and needing to talk about what we had all heard in the announcements.  By then it had been accepted that the crashes had been no accident, and more details were shared over the P.A. as they unfolded.  My students wanted to talk about what had happened and to try to understand its significance, so that hour was spent in discussion and in a quick lesson on Pearl Harbor of 1941, an event before any of us had been born.  The kids wanted reassurance, as though we might be the next ones to be attacked.  My heart went out to them, as they were really shaken by the terrible but gradual clarification of what had occurred.

Needless to say, the rest of that week classrooms and the faculty lounge were abuzz with conjecture and much discussion of what we had all heard.  The evenings that followed were filled with television coverage of the events of 9/11, and the images of those planes slamming into the two towers, the vision of those collapsing buildings, people leaping from windows to their deaths, crowds covered in ashes fleeing the area, the sights of the injured and bewildered citizens of New York in chaos were embedded forever in every American heart.

By Friday evening I was saturated with those horrific images to the point that I watched THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW for some healing.  The episode was about the speeding city slicker whose life was one big race to get nowhere, a man who in the course of the story learned from the people of Mayberry how to relax and to appreciate the simple joys of being alive in a peaceful little town.  At the end of the episode,  Andy plays the guitar while singing “The Little Brown Church in the Vale” with Barney and then the two of them leave to get an ice cream soda while the city man sleeps on the porch in a rocking chair, relaxing perhaps for the first time in years, an apple in his hand, the peel spiraling down to the foot of the chair in one long piece.  It was a welcome reminder that our country was still there and that there would always be pockets of innocence and gentle people, who appreciated what they had and where they were.  Mayberry that evening became my escape into a black & white shared recollection of an innocent and gentle past, but I knew that none of us would ever be the same again.

About John

About John John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes. Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018 View all posts by John →
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