Class of 2001

By Lauren Doty: I was 18 on 9/11, I had finished high school earlier that year and was living in a tiny apartment working at a gas station and going to Kirkwood. I woke up that day to a ringing phone that just wouldn't stop. After a while I got up and answered, my mother had been calling me over and over. She was upset and said we were going to war. After a bit of her raving and a little time to clear my head I turned on the T.V. just in time to see the 2nd plane hit.

It was so shocking. I was in a daze. I kept thinking that there had to be some sort of explanation, certainly no one had really attacked us. Throughout the day the reports just got worse, attack on the Pentagon, an attempted attack on Washington D.C. I went to work like I always did, I had to walk because my car had broken down (again). At the time I was working at the Coastal Mart by the Hy-Vee on Johnson Ave, it's a car wash now.

My shift started out normally enough. The assistant manager left and I was alone in the store. About 45 minutes later things started to get really crazy. This tiny gas station that hardly did $1000 in sales a day had a line as far down Johnson Ave as I could see within an hour of my arriving at work. The assistant manager came back and called in the other 2 employees. There was only one cash register. One of us ran the machine that cleared checks and credit cards, another ran the register and the other 2 directed traffic at the pumps. People were so scared.

In the days that followed there was no good news. So many died. What made me most angry was that they were mothers and brothers, daughters, fathers, regular people. They were not soldiers. They did not go to work that day knowing that they were risking death.

Many of my friends enlisted in the military directly after graduating, it was common enough then because of the college funding one would get. All those boys and girls in my grade who enlisted were now going to be deployed into a terrible war. The class of 2001 came of age in a terrible time. I think many of us realized that day how naive we had been.