Joy Watry, recent graduate
“I heard on Z104, I guess. I was getting ready in the morning, and I just heard them talking about it. I was walking to class and I didn’t hear anything about it, which I thought was really retarded that our teachers didn’t even talk about it. At that point it had just happened, so I didn’t know the seriousness of it, I guess.
“I didn’t hear about anything all day, and when I came home, I guess I heard everything on the news . . .
“I’m in the business school . . . there are so many economical effects of it. They could have talked about that. It was never brought up in any of my classes.”
Akihiro Fukuda, freshman from Japan
“I was in my home, then when I woke up in the morning I saw the TV. The airplane hit the building, and then I know that the terrorists hijacked the airplane. Actually, my sister called me from my country; she tried to make sure I was fine.
“After I watched TV, I went to class. Everybody was shocked. They talked all about it.
“People were so depressed, I think, that day.”
Chad Rathmann, first-year graduate student, attending University of Minnesota at the time
“It was my senior year at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. I was walking back from my job at a library, and I actually stopped at a computer lab, and all these people came rushing in trying to look at the websites for CNN and stuff and no one could get on the websites. I didn’t really ask about it; people were just rushing around and people were just like, oh, the sites are jammed.
“And then I went to work across the plaza at the library and my coworker was like, ‘Oh, did you hear that a plane crashed into one of the buildings?’ And at first I didn’t really think of terrorism at all, I thought, oh, it was a small plane. And then we tried to get online and they set up a TV in the foyer in the library and we just watched all day. They called off school there at, like, 11 or 12, so I just went home and watched.
“It was just unbelievable.
“Until you could see it with your own eyes, you could only hear people talk about it. It was pretty unbelievable.”
Sheetal Shah, third-year law student
“A friend of mine, it was her birthday and she came over . . . We were going to give her a present. And she was like, ‘You guys won’t believe what happened.’ And that was how we found out.
“We went right to the law school because we all had class, and in every classroom they had TVs up.
“We didn’t celebrate for another week.”
Erin Hollander, second-year MATC student
“I was in my car driving home from class, from MATC, and I had some music station on and they were talking about some event that had just happened. I changed to the next channel and it was the same thing, and I kept going to all the other channels, and it was like, ‘Oh, I better listen to this.’ So I started listening to it, and I was like, ‘Oh, my god.’
“When I got home, I had a couple phone calls from my mom, my dad called and was like, ‘Did you hear what happened?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and I called a couple friends and was like, ‘Did you guys hear what happened?’ . . . That was pretty much all I did.
“I didn’t give blood because I’m petrified of needles, as much as I wanted to.
“I didn’t donate any clothing or anything.”
Jayson Gant, junior
“I was at work at the time, and one of my coworkers said they saw it on the news. We turned on the TV in one of our meeting rooms and just watched it.”
Terra Thein, second-year grad
“I was in my office here on campus, and one of my coworkers told me what happened. I went to another woman’s office to listen to NPR.”
Gretta Neff, sophomore
“I was in my dorm room, and I heard my dormmates down the hall saying something really strange is happening . . . They were seeing it on TV.
“It didn’t seem that real to me, so I just kind of went about things until it just kept getting worse and worse.
“I went to classes. None of my classes were cancelled.
“It didn’t seem like a big deal until the day after, when people actually realized what had happened.
“I prayed about it, maybe.”
Nate Rentmeester, junior
“I saw it on the news and I went to classes because it was early in the morning and I was tired.
“It was a calculus class, Calc 234. I went to class, and then I just watched TV like forever, nonstop, like everyone else.”
Aimee Smith, junior
“I was sitting in the kitchen watching TV, and I kind of looked up, and it was a news flash; all the regular ones were broadcasting it.
“It was actually my first day of work here in the Union . . . the first Tuesday of work. I remember having to go in at 8:30 in the morning and not knowing how important it was. And then being able to, after working a little while, come down and watch the screens. Everyone was just surrounding the TVs.
“I called my dad later on that day just because he travels all the time and I was flipping out about it, because I couldn’t get a hold of him. He called me back later on that day to tell me everything was fine. I pretty much just called my parents, and that was it.”
Sandi Cotner, junior
“I think I just woke up and my roommate had the TV on and told me the Twin Towers had blown up. We just sat there and watched TV basically all day, and I went to the classes I had to, and then I just went home and watched the news.
“We had classes, and they didn’t talk about it. I remember I had an art history class, and I was shocked that we didn’t mention anything about it. I found it really bizarre.”
Paul Hager, freshman
“I was in a high school class at the time, and a teacher came into the room and said that a plane had hit the WTC buildings. We just laughed at him because we thought it was a joke. Class let out, and all of a sudden you could see this mass in the hallway around a small TV that was in one of the AV rooms, and they showed the first plane hitting. The rest of the day there were TVs set up throughout the whole high school for you to watch.
“Classes continued . . . In each class we talked about it, and at the end of the day the principal made an announcement that a great tragedy had occurred, etc., etc.
“The next day, there was an official statement drawn up by the school district as far as how they were going to react and deal with it.”
Kara Ginther, freshman
“Well, actually I was at school and I was going to my locker and I noticed a group of students around a TV. I heard a bunch of exclamations like, “Oh my god.”
“It took actually a while for me to catch on about what was going on, because, of course, I wasn’t expecting it. And just by watching it and asking people, I found out what happened.
“I didn’t go to any classes after that; I just stayed and watched TV.
“It surprised me that some people just sort of went on with going to classes and everything . . . but I didn’t.”
Dana Spolum, senior
“I was in Denmark, and I found out online. I was in disbelief, and I thought it was a joke. Basically, I thought somebody had hacked into Yahoo — I saw it in Yahoo — and had put something on there that was false.
“Then I called a couple of my friends, and it turned out it was true, and then I just watched CNN for a while.
“We talked to our advisor here in Madison pretty quickly — within the day — and she was saying that everything was fine. Well, not that everything was fine, but, ‘Don’t worry too much . . . You’re not in any great danger, especially in Denmark.’ So that wasn’t too bad.
“I definitely called home a couple times just to tell the parents everything was fine and make sure the family was okay, and the Americans that were there kind of talked among themselves. We got together that night and kind of talked a little bit.”
Mitchell Marks, junior
“I was at work — I do a work-at-home type thing — and I was just getting the guy up for the morning, and he read his little e-mail news thing for the day and saw that a plane had crashed into the building. I was like, ‘No way,’ so we turned on the news.
“I did go to classes . . . a little bit. Some of them were cut short definitely, but nothing too much.”
— interviews by Amanda Noonan Heyman