Shock. Confusion. An overwhelming feeling of not knowing what came next. These were the emotions that came up again and again in our conversations regarding the moments after hearing about the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the 25th anniversary of the events of that day, PHS educators — some which were students at PHS on that day — reflected on a day that forever lives in their memory.
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For many, that Tuesday morning began as a crisp fall day. In room 173, English teacher Susan Murphy began her second day teaching journalism with a lesson on hard news. She had asked her students to log onto CNN to analyze the days’ headlines. Suddenly, the news site crashed, with her students’ screens freezing on a picture of a plane hitting the North Tower.
“They thought it was like part of teaching about hard news [and] that I have done this simulation,” said Murphy. “And I’m like, this isn’t a simulation.”
Down the hall in Room 152, the former Orchestra room, Latin teacher Dr. Lynda Danvers ’03, still remembers the moment she first heard the news.
“Someone popped their head in, pulled Mr. Loughran out of the room, and then he had to come back in and tell us individually,” said Danvers. “It wasn’t like an announcement over the loudspeaker.”
Like many throughout the school, Orchestra teacher Robert Loughran initially assumed the attack was the accident.
“I’m thinking of this small single prop plane. [An] amateur pilot didn’t know what was going on [and] got the World Trade Center incorrectly in their flight path,” said Loughran. The attack on the second Tower eventually confirmed many’s worst fears.
With cellular networks overloaded, getting in touch with family members and loved ones proved nearly impossible. Danvers remembered running throughout the school with her best friend in search of a working phone so her friend could reach her father, who worked in Lower Manhattan.
Given Princeton’s proximity to New York City, countless students had family members who worked in the city, meaning the attacks struck painfully close to home. Lauren Freedman ’04, PHS Assistant Principal, remembers sitting in her Spanish class when a student couldn’t reach her father, who worked in one of the Towers.
“She was sprinting through the hallways, freaking out, obviously very emotional,” recalled Freedman through tears. “And unfortunately later, we found out that her father had passed away…A lot of people in this community have family members who work in the city and who they lost during 9/11.”
Following confirmation of the attacks, counselors were tasked with compiling lists of students with family members in the city and supporting panicked students. Dr. Andrea Dinan, a counselor and field hockey coach at the time, spent the day in her office with one of her players, attempting to call her father while the line stayed busy all day.
“Finding out at night that he had gone downstairs to the ATM machine to get money, so he got out very safely … it was really a happy ending,” said Dinan. “But it really weighed on us.”
With the scope of the tragedy becoming increasingly clear through the morning, the school was placed in a lockdown – a safety protocol that was largely unheard of at the time. Silence fell over many parts of the building, a single TV in the cafeteria became a focal point for many students.
“There were probably 300 students, everyone just looking up, and it was dead silence. You could hear a pin drop. … It was this perfect crispy day and then the juxtaposition of that out of nowhere … It defied the imagination,” said Murphy. “It felt so quiet without any planes going over, which feels like a small detail, but it was something that was also really kind of uncanny.”
In the days that followed, the Princeton community came together in support of each other and the recovery effort. Dr. Rick Miller, Social Studies supervisor and volunteer firefighter, drove an ambulance with his crew up to a staging area in Jersey City three days after the attacks.
“I still remember as we drove up, you could see the smoke still billowing from ground zero … seeing the Statue of Liberty and then behind it, the smoke rising up,” said Miller. “We ended up staging there for 12 hours … I was there the day that President Bush’s helicopter came in, and it was a very eerie sight because there was not a plane in the sky the entire day, obviously, except for two fighter jets.”
The aftermath of the attacks left a permanent impact on both Princeton and the country, with the school finding ways to honor the many that were lost in the local community. The Social Studies Department established the Reissman Award, a scholarship named in honor of a PHS parent who loved history and lost his life on 9/11. The community was also forever tied to the memory of Todd Beamer, the Cranbury father who led passengers on Flight 93 with his rallying cry, “Let’s roll”. His three children later attended PHS.
“I had them, all three, in Homeroom, too. That was another connection, another family. And there were so many family connections that came out in the days afterwards. There were many students who lost parents, it was unthinkable,” said Murphy.
Yet teachers also recounted darker societal shifts: a surge of fear, the passage of the Patriot Act, and targeted rhetoric in the days that followed. But the feeling of a country and community united is one they carry forward strongest in their collective memory.
“The climate changed. We were all taking care of one another. It was a beautiful thing. People stepped up in the community because it was a hard time here,” said Freedman.
For the staff who witnessed the day first hand, the 25th anniversary is a reminder of the necessity of keeping this history alive. Danvers compared the effort to record 9/11 memories to the Shoah Foundation’s work preserving testimonies from Holocaust survivors before they are permanently lost to time.
“As we move further and further away from it, there’s now all of these people, a quarter of a century worth of people behind me that never got to experience this,” said Danvers. “The collective memory sort of goes away.”
Miller echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the broader importance of reflecting on a time of national reckoning as time moves forward.
“I’m glad you’re doing this, because I think events like this and, 25 years later, it’s important that we keep the memory of what happened alive. We learn the lessons of 9/11. We understand better about events such as this to honor those who have suffered from it, and also as a nation … [to] move forward after a tragedy such as this,” said Miller.