As best memory serves, the class was a management course in the old Business and Economics Building on WVU’s campus. Dr. Neil Bucklew, a former WVU president, had retired from the presidency but still taught a course or two in the College of Business.
It was a morning class, starting around 9, it seems.
He cut it short. In truth, it never really started.
His instructions as we left: Go watch what is happening.
This was pre-social media, pre-iPhone. Most of us heeded his advice and found our way to the Mountainlair to understand what was happening.
It was a short walk. We entered a building that was never silent when completely packed — until that day. You could hear only soft whispers.
A small television rested high on the wall, almost near the ceiling, on an old-school mount. Flat panels were still somewhere in the future. That television made us all aware of what had already happened by that point: two planes into the Twin Towers. Real-time reporting of a plane into the Pentagon. Then the crash in Shanksville — not far from Morgantown.
That stirred people.
Many WVU students were from New Jersey or the greater New York City area. They were lost in grief, worry and fear, trying to make calls. More than a few borrowed a cell phone. The bank of pay phones was full with lines behind each one. Not everyone carried a cell phone then.
Landline or cell, many got fast busy signals, the result of an overloaded still largely non-digital telephony network.
Were classes canceled?
It didn’t matter. Nobody went after what had happened.
I remember listening to ABC News Radio, which was being simulcast as 9/11 unfolded on the West Virginia Radio Corporation stations in Morgantown. The drive from downtown to Sabraton made itself — or at least it felt that way.
The Greer Building housed WVAQ, as it does today; the 7 pm to midnight shift was a great experience for me. The people there — the news professionals — would know more. All the coverage, and what it meant locally, would be gathered on the second floor and come to be known.
Normally, the lobby doors were unlocked during business hours.
Not that day.
They were locked tight. The employee entrance was the only way in. Sensible. Nobody knew what was happening, how far it would go or what might come next.
I stayed for hours before leaving. Hanging on every word broadcast or uttered off-air.
That learning was more important than anything else that day: trying to understand what exactly had happened, who was responsible, why it happened and what was yet to come.
The president crisscrossed the country before returning to Washington. Later that night, he would address the nation.
People were scared.
But people also put everything else aside and unified against what we now faced together — an attack against all of us, an attack on our way of life.
Sadly, that unity faded as time went on.
Twenty-five years ago.
I can’t remember much from that year with any specificity. But I remember that day vividly and the following few.
The news. The feelings. The conversations.
I called my mom and dad to tell them I loved them, knowing that because of the attacks, many others would never have that opportunity again.
America is often at its best when tested. We rose that day.
As the years pass, let’s remember those who were denied the rest of their lives that morning. We have a duty not only to ourselves, but to them — to live our best and fullest lives, knowing they were denied the chance to live theirs.
Maybe it isn’t foolish to believe that if we thought a little more about September 11 — if we carried some small part of that day with us as we began each new one — this country might be a better place.
A better nation.
In their honor.