Twenty-Five Years Later...We Remember
9/11 from the Perspective of a University of Arizona Freshman
Where I Was
On this fateful Tuesday, I had woken up in my room in Yavapai Dorm at the University of Arizona and began to get ready for classes. I entered the common bathroom down the hall and started washing up; a radio sitting on the counter near the sinks was blaring, a usual occurrence. I was alone and wasn’t paying too much attention to the radio, but as I started to brush my teeth, I heard the newscaster mention something about the Twin Towers in New York: an airplane had crashed into the North Tower. Dumbfounded, I stared at the radio for a few seconds, toothbrush frozen in my mouth. Upon deeper realization that something serious was going on, I spit out the toothpaste, ran back to my room and shook my roommate, Elijah, awake.
“Dude, there’s something happening in New York. An airplane crashed into the North Tower.”
He bolted out of bed, jumping down from the top bunk and we turned on the small television we had in the room—just in time to see UA175 crashing into the South Tower.
Who I Was Changed
In 2001, I was a freshman just starting my college career. To say that 9/11 had a lasting impact on my life is an understatement. Freshly graduated from high school and on an optimistic path, my country and world had just suffered a devastating wound. I—and the life I had envisioned from that point on—was changed irrevocably.
Wall of Expression
A few days after 9/11, the University of Arizona erected a Wall of Expression on the mall of our campus. It was a slate of free thought, reaction (anger, disbelief, and all the other emotions), and grieving. I documented a few sections of this through photography.
July 2003: Visiting Ground Zero
When I was in Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, D.C. during an internship at the National Institutes of Health in 2003, I decided to visit my cousin in New York and Ground Zero. By this point, most of the rubble had been cleared, and One World Trade Center was still in the preparation and planning phases. Visiting the site in person was a sobering and somber experience.
On August 21, 2002, New York Governor Pataki, New Jersey Governor McGreevey, and New York City Mayor Bloomberg proclaimed that a viewing wall would be erected at Ground Zero to honor the heroes of 9/11/01, inscribing the names of those who were killed in the attack, both on the planes and in the buildings.
Revisiting One World Trade Center in November 2015
In November 2015, around Thanksgiving, I traveled to New York to visit family and returned to the memorial site. The events of 9/11 continue to profoundly shape me and molded the course of my careers over the previous twenty-five years. At a fundamental level, they compelled me to dedicate my life to public safety, and to protecting our way of life and the freedoms we cherish in this country. It is especially fitting that 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States. May we thrive for many years more.
