JMU Students Relive The Day Terrorism, Innocence Collided

HARRISONBURG — As the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were broadcast on every news station in the country, the televisions at Charlie O’Neill’s elementary school in Vienna were all turned off.

O’Neill, now a sophomore at James Madison University, says that even as children were being pulled out of school by their parents, he was not made aware of the events unfolding in New York, Northern Virginia and Pennsylvania.

“They didn’t want anybody to panic, I guess, because a lot of people had parents that worked in D.C.,” said O’Neill, 19. “You always heard about somebody down the street’s dad [or other family member that] died.”

When he finally did see the attacks, he wasn’t sure what had happened.

“I thought I was watching a movie on TV,” O’Neill said. “It wasn’t until a year or two later that I realized how bad it actually was.”

O’Neill, like most current JMU undergraduates, was not even a teenager when terrorists sent by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden crashed airplanes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Arlington.

“I didn’t understand the gravity of it or why the buildings fell [in 2001],” said JMU sophomore Sidney Cover, 19, whose father responded to the Pentagon as an emergency worker with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “I think after that event, it made me a lot more patriotic. I remember going through my neighborhood and every single house had an American flag out front.”

Outside of New York City in Ringwood, N.J., Keith Picher, 20, says people in his neighborhood came together to offer each other support in the wake of the attacks.

“I was more upset when I was younger,” Picher said. “I try to look at how it did help bring people together. … It was good that everyone was a lot more helpful.”

Every time JMU junior Natalie Ball, 20, travels in an airplane, she thinks of the events of 9/11 — not just the horror and loss of life that occurred that day, but also how the attacks shaped the nation.

“There’s more unity,” she said. “We’re all [in it] for the same cause.”

Contact Emily Sharrer at 574-6286 or esharrer@dnronline.com