Where we were: 9/11 remembered
Students at the North Fort Myers Academy for the Arts watched it on their TVs in class. Students at Bishop Verot watched it in the auditorium, and teachers and counselors had to help the kids cope with what had just happened.
This was the scene during and in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people and injured another 6,000.
Those students who remember that day are adults now, while many teachers who were there in 2001 still remember it as if it was yesterday.
Locally, schools in Lee County were closed for the rest of the week. Once opened teachers become counselors who had to comfort and help students come to grips with what had happened, the images played out over and over on TV.
Marcus Haubt was a sophomore at Bishop Verot High School with several of his friends and watched what was happening on a big screen in the auditorium.
“They sent us to the auditorium and they said a disaster had happened and we were very upset about it, so we went in there and saw it,” Haubt said. “We watched the second plane hit and the buildings fall and taking care of those who were real upset about it.”
Haubt said he remembers all the sadness, the disgust and the hatred for those who did it.
Josh Isaac, then a fourth-grader at the North Fort Myers Academy for the Arts, was in class when his teacher heard the news and reacted.
“All the TVs were turned to what was happening. We saw the building fall and everything. We thought we were watching a TV show or a movie and everyone was crying. We didn’t know what was happening,” Isaac said. “She asked us if we had any relatives in New York and a couple of our classmates did. The teachers had them call their parents and check up on them.”
Isaac said there were no tragedies involved with those students and it was an eye-opener and it has stayed crazy ever since. The students who cried were brought to talk to the teachers and the teachers called the parents to talk to them, and calm them down.
Melissa Llewelyn, a former cheer coach at North Fort Myers High School and now a teacher at South, was a teacher at Lee Middle (now James Stephens Middle). She said the principal didn’t make any announcement, waiting until after their lunch break to tell them, by which time the planes had hit and the buildings had come down.
She believed the administration wanted the students to feel safe and, by not telling them, they would achieve that goal.
“They said something had gone on, but didn’t want the kids to get upset. A lot of parents came and picked up their kids, but we didn’t know until after lunch,” Llewelyn said. “They had a lot of counselors coming out to the schools so the kids that needed them could do so.”
The teachers were there to be grief counselors because many of the students were more comfortable talking to someone they knew rather than someone they didn’t.
That wasn’t much of a problem for North assistant principal Doug McKeever. He was a guidance counselor at the school when the attacks happened and remembers everything that happened to this day.
“My secretary came in and I was with a parent and student reviewing their schedule. She ran into my office and said New York was being attacked,” McKeever said. “We went into the career center and at that moment the second tower was being hit.”
McKeever remembered a lot of students questioning what was going on. The teachers were trying to explain what was going on in the world and explain terrorism.
What made it even tougher was the fact there were a lot of students who knew people from New York. McKeever’s secretary lost a relative in the tower that day. No students had a loved one lose their life.
McKeever said that didn’t make the experience any less traumatic.
“As a guidance counselor, we dealt with a lot of the grieving that went on. It was a traumatic day,” McKeever said. “It went on for a while, but eventually people came to terms with it because the United States started to address it. Everyone came together and we helped the kids who were hurting.”