Remembering 9/11 Twenty-Five Years Later
- Rick Bergmann
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
It’s hard to believe that this year marks a quarter century since September 11, 2001. Twenty-five years is a long time, and yet in many ways, it feels like it was just yesterday. I was a junior at the University of Maryland in College Park when it happened, and I still remember the details vividly.
At the time, I didn’t have a car, so I relied on public transportation to get from home to campus. I left the house around 7 a.m. because I had a 9 a.m. Modern American Literature class, and I wanted to get a little reading done and grab a bite to eat before class.
We were studying Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise at the time. If you’ve never read it, it is almost eerie how relevant the book felt that day. The novel follows a college professor named Jack, who lives with his wife, Babette, and their children. Their ordinary lives are disrupted by a toxic chemical accident, forcing Jack to confront his fear of death and the uncertainty of the world around him. The novel explores consumerism, technology, fear, and our attempts to find security in an unpredictable world. Reading that book on September 11 has stuck with me to this day.
I arrived on campus and headed to the student union to grab coffee and a bagel before walking across the street to class. When I walked in, everyone was gathered around one of the TVs in the union watching Today. Matt Lauer had just announced that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers, and there really wasn’t much other information available yet.
I remember thinking, “That’s weird,” grabbing my coffee and heading to class.
When I got there, I asked my professor if he had seen the news about a plane hitting the Twin Towers in New York. He said he hadn’t, and then we had class. I really didn’t give it much more thought until I walked out afterward and put my headphones in my ears.
That’s when I realized how bad things were.
Living in Maryland, so close to Washington, D.C., I think it was easy to take for granted what it meant to live near the center of the federal government. That morning was an eye-opening experience. Suddenly, an attack on the government didn’t seem like something happening somewhere far away. It felt frighteningly close to home.
The news reporting was all over the map. No one seemed to have definitive answers, and details were coming out minute by minute. It was terrifying. Classes were canceled, and I had to head home without even knowing whether there would be a bus to pick me up.
As I stood at the bus stop, I listened to the radio for anything new. There was a lot of reporting that later turned out not to be true. Stations were reporting bombs in the streets, additional attacks and people being hurt. Rumors and facts were mixed together, and it seemed like mass chaos.
The bus finally came, and I headed home to watch the story unfold on television, like so many other Americans did that day. September 11 is one of only two news events from my younger years that I can remember so vividly. The other is the Challenger disaster.
I often hear young people who didn’t live through 9/11 ask why we have a day of remembrance. The truth is, I don’t always have an easy answer for that.
For me, it is a day to remind myself that the world can change in an instant and that none of us lives in a bubble. It is also a day to remember that hate doesn’t solve anything. It only breeds more hate, and eventually, it ends in tragedy.
I remember the sense of unity that followed those terrible days, and 25 years later, I find myself wishing we could rediscover some of that willingness to see one another as neighbors first. We may have different backgrounds, different beliefs and different ideas about what is best for our country, but each of us has something to offer.
Perhaps that is one of the most important lessons worth remembering 25 years later: We need to embrace our neighbors, not be afraid of them.
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