School daze

By Toni Sherrets: I was a senior in high school the morning of Sept. 11th, 2001. I had just come inside from our morning marching band practice when I heard someone say, "A plane just flew into the World Trade Center." We all made jokes about how it must have been a "drunk pilot" as we put away our marching gear. But when I walked into my study hall a few minutes later, I found my teacher and several students glued to the TV. I started to talk to them and was quickly silenced by my teacher. At that moment I saw the second plane hit the towers.

The rest of the school day was one of the strangest experiences of my life. We moved from class to class as the bells rang, but there was no learning being done that day. The halls were silent with every class change. Every classroom was glued to one news channel or another, and we all silently fell into our seats in each class to watch the next chapter unfold.

I was grief stricken -- for the passengers of the planes, the people in the WTC, their families and our country. You could tell that everyone was thinking about their own loved ones and thanking God they were OK.

I just remember thinking, "I'm supposed to graduate this year and go on to do great things. This can't be happening, this can't be how it ends."