As the 18th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, students begin to reflect on their memories, feelings and the effect that the tragedy has left on America.
Incoming freshmen at Long Beach City College can now have been born after the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Christine Torres, a biochemistry major who was born after the September 11 attacks, explains that she had to educate herself on the tragedy.
“I had to kind of teach myself about it, I grew up watching adult cartoons and they would always joke about it, that was my exposure,” Torres said.
“My family never really talked about it.”
Maliyah Mason, journalism major, was around five or six years old when the September 11 attacks occurred.
“I was on my way to kindergarten and I thought it was a movie because it was so chaotic,” Mason said.
“September 11 negatively affected the United States because it gave a lot of power to the U.S. to control what it sees as terrorism, which is a vague word, it gave the U.S. too much control in controlling the rest of the world.”
Mario Garcia, a computer science major, was only 2 years old when the attacks took place.
“I don’t remember much, but I do remember my mom telling me about it when she woke up, it was all over the news,” Garcia recalls.
Despite the downsides, Garcia believes that September 11 changed America and our security for the better.
“Just like with what happened with concerts two years ago, security got beefed up for the right reasons, although I hate the racial profiling that happens at airports and with police because of it,” Garcia expressed.
David Lehman, the Department Head of History and Political Science at LBCC, explains where he was on September 11, 2001.
“I was here on this campus in 2001 and I remember the shock and the feeling that people had. 18 years is a long time, I realized when I teach my History 11 class that for most of my students, 9/11 is something that they can’t remember, it did not happen when they were aware of their surroundings,” Lehman said.
“You tend to remember things from your memory and when that no longer is a personal memory, yeah that’s going to be the response. Perhaps it also gets replaced by other issues, other things that happen, so it’s hard for people at this point to remember what it felt like at that moment.”
Lehman struggled with finding the right words to tell his students on the morning of the terrorist attack.
“What I remember is the uncertainty of ‘Should I go to class?’, ‘Will classes be held?’, ‘What should I say to my students?’ My memory when I think back to what I said to my students that day, I was trying to be reassuring and I’m not sure it was very helpful,” Lehman said.
Kim Porrazzo, a long time resident of Long Beach, explains the atmosphere in his middle school classroom on that day in 2001.
“Obviously everyone was kind of numb, you can just see it in their eyes. Nobody could really talk, it was a lot of quiet, and middle school and quiet… never happens,” Porrazzo recalls.
Porrazzo set up a 9/11 memorial on his front lawn in honor of the tragedy, it consists of string lights, American flags, and two stacks of bricks meant to represent the fallen Twin Towers.
“I’m patriotic, I love the country and I do what I can do. This is my way of doing things,” Porrazzo said.