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A UMNS Commentary
By Adam Robbins*
11 A.M. ET September 11, 2011
“9/11 showed me that it's important how we choose to act out faith.” - Adam Robbins. A UMNS photo courtesy of Bruce Robbins.
On Sept. 11, 2001, I was a junior at Stuyvesant High School, three or four blocks north of the World Trade Center.
I was in physics class when a classmate said he saw smoke coming
from the twin towers. At first, people didn’t know what was happening
because it wasn’t obvious an airplane had hit the building. I thought
it might be a bomb. Everybody ran to the window, and we saw one of the
twin towers burning. The teacher decided to start teaching again, so we
all returned to our seats.
A little while later, the second plane came in. It was very loud.
We could hear it screeching, and when it hit the tower, the ground
shook. The whole building shook, even though we were a couple of blocks
away. Everyone got up and ran to the window again. We could see the
second tower burning.
The teacher tried to keep teaching physics. I guess that was his way
of responding. Nobody was paying attention. People were listening to
radios. Everybody was completely ignoring the teacher or staring out
the window and watching the towers burn. We could see debris falling.
The principal came on the PA system and said we couldn’t go outside for
lunch because of the debris.
At this point, nobody really grasped how large the disaster would
be. It became much more obvious when the first tower fell. It felt like
an earthquake. The building shook again. This time I was in the
hallway. I couldn’t see the tower shaking. It was traumatic for many
people at the school who had parents or friends working in the World
Trade Center.
Looking out the windows to the south, all we could see was dust. It
was dark outside, like the Apocalypse. We couldn’t see the sky. We
could just see big dust clouds coming up from where the tower had
collapsed. Looking down the West Side Highway, we saw dust clouds
moving toward us and people covered in dust.
On 9-11, Robbins joined the crowds of people walking home following the collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers.
A web-only photo from flickr/creative commons/Gunni Cool.
After the first tower fell, school staff had us go back to our
homerooms and then began evacuating students via the fire exits on the
north side of the building.
A long walk home
I began walking home, about seven or eight miles. Because Stuyvesant
is a magnet school, people came from all over the city. I had one of
the shortest distances to go; some walked 15 miles. I walked with a
couple of classmates who lived in my neighborhood. I got home late that
afternoon. No public transportation was running.
My cell phone didn’t work. Payphones didn’t work either. People
were trying to call. I didn’t get to talk to anybody from my family.
I remember coming in and seeing my grandmother. She was shocked. I
don’t remember talking with her about what had happened, other than
just her being happy I was OK. My grandfather went to get my younger
sister from her school, about seven miles from the World Trade Center.
My dad was out of town — in Denver — for work. I don’t think he knew
about the attack until a couple of hours later because he wasn’t
watching TV. My mom was making her way home from work, also walking.
People kept calling all evening to see if we were all right.
Sept. 11 certainly changed my awareness of the world. It really made
me think about how everything is so interconnected. Later that day, I
remember watching the news and was amazed to recognize a connection
between the United States and Afghanistan, a country I had never heard
of. The events of 9/11 moved me to look more globally and to consider
the world around me in a broader sense than I had before.
Adam Robbins in 2000.
A web-only photo.
After high school, I studied anthropology at Colby College in
Waterville, Me. Today I work in Manhattan trying to help institutional
investors be more environmentally sustainable and have a longer-term
investment perspective.
I tutor through Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, United Methodist
in New York. I teach a little kid math after school. At this point in
my life, that is how I am most active in my church and community.
‘We have lost this uniting moment’
Sept. 11, 2001, showed me it's important how we choose to act out
faith. Times of crisis like 9/11 push us away from our usual habits —
routine, comfortable, rational — and force us to base our actions on
our core beliefs. Because we don't know what else to do, normal
decision-making processes are lost.
The beautiful thing about post-9/11 New York was that New Yorkers,
as a diverse community, responded in a positive way and came together.
Christians like me can see this as a reaffirmation of our faith, that
we are just acting out what we constantly proclaim we believe.
At first glance, there is no obvious set of core beliefs for New
York, which sometimes can seem an infamously godless city. However,
after the attacks, it became apparent in my school and neighborhood
that my classmates and neighbors of Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and other
faith traditions were undergoing the same metamorphosis I was. It was a
process of uniting with one's community for support, a community
diverse in every way imaginable.
As the churches and synagogues filled during the weeks after the
attack, religious communities began to ask about one another and to
learn and exchange with one another. While we previously had co-existed
without really noticing differences, after the attacks, we learned how
and why we were different, and it made us appreciate the strength of
our community even more.
I look back now on the awakening I experienced as a teenager in
post-9/11 New York, the way my school and city strengthened in a time
of crisis and what has happened nationally over the past 10 years. It
appears we as a country have lost this uniting moment. We need to step
out of our daily routines and consider the daily crises of poverty,
hunger and hate in the world We need to return to the moments in which
we forgot routine and commit to act as a community guided by our
principles.
See complete coverage of the 9/11 anniversary
*Adam Robbins, a lifelong United Methodist, works in institutional investment in New York City.
News media contact: Barbara Dunlap-Berg, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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