9/11 in Lowell House, Harvard University, by Marshall Poe
From MemoryArchive
Who: Marshall Poe What: 9/11 Attacks in NYC When: September 11, 2001 Where: Harvard University, Cambridge MA
I woke up that day and turned on the radio, as I always did before I washed up. NPR, “Morning Edition.” I had a big day ahead of me, as I was just starting a new job as dean of a large residential college at Harvard Lowell House. My mind was focused on a meeting in which I was pretty sure I would have to kick a student out of school. I really didn’t want to do that.
The voice on the radio said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I’m a historian, so it’s my business to remember things like the B-24 that hit the Empire State Building in the later 1940s. And so I did. It immediately came to mind. I thought “Couldn’t be a military plane this time. They have very sophisticated radar. Probably a small private plane.” I got dressed and made a cup of coffee. The voice on the radio then said something to the effect that the one of the towers was engulfed in flames. I thought that was weird, and that it meant the plane was large. I decided to go across the courtyard to the Common Room where there was a big TV. I was pretty sure it would be on the news.
When I got there, some students (about five) were already huddled around the TV. Some were in their PJs. None of them said a word. I just sat down. The tower was indeed on fire. I really couldn’t believe it. I recalled immediately a time when I was in NYC with my friend Allen. It was the mid 1990s. We were walking around in lower Manhattan. He pointed to the WTC towers, huge and looming in the distance. “Someone tried to make one of those fall down,” he said with more than a hint of incredulity. Couldn’t happen, he seemed to be saying. They are too big, too solid, too firmly rooted.
And so, I thought, were we. Until that day I sat in the Common Room watching the tower burn. And then another was hit. And then one fell. And then the other fell. I ran to my office to call Allen. No luck. Later I learned that Allen watched from his rooftop as things fell apart. I called other friends. No luck.
It turned out all my close friends were fine. Later that day we kicked a kid out school and a new phase in my life began.
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