9/11 – Where Were You?

A student from Trimmier Elementary School waves his flag during a 9/11 remembrance ceremony, Sept. 10. (DVIDSHUB)

Michael Arzola, a 22-year-old Lehman College senior, was in the seventh grade when the attacks occurred.

“I…remember being one of the last ones to be picked up from my class,” Arzola said. “And my father picked me up telling me that my sister worked across the street except she didn’t go to work that day.” Arzola said he planned to spend the 10th anniversary with his sister. “Thank God she is still here,” he said.

James Davis, 51, CUNY staffer, still vividly remembers the morning of Sept. 11.

“I was actually preparing to vote because it was Primary Day,” Davis said. “I had been told that someone had crashed a plane at the World Trade Center. I thought it was a small plane, but after I saw the news footage, I then realized it was something big.”

Lehman College junior Ivanna Uquillas was in elementary school at the time.

“I was in class and the teacher stopped teaching because another teacher told her something that was happening,” Uquillas recalled. “There was a devastating silence from the class.” When Uquillas watched the news with her aunt, she said she witnessed “everyone falling off the buildings.” “I was confused as to what was going but I remember my aunt crying.”

Lehman College sophomore Matthew Blanks said he was 10 years old at the time.

“The teacher walked out of the clas and we were joking when she first announced the crash,” Blanks said. “However, she came back with a radio and said that this was a serious matter.”

Twenty-one-year-old Fatou Diaw, a Lehman College student, was living in her native country, Senegal, ten years ago. She said her father ws living in the Bronx and working right near the towers. However, he did not go to work that day, but Diaw and her family did not know that.

“I prayed and cried as I watched T.V.,” Diaw recalled. “(I) saw people jumping out of the windows at the World Trade Center. I was so worried.”

Colleen Farrell is a 22-year-old Lehman College graduate student who remembers Sept. 11 vividly.

“I was in school and, one by one, the majority of students were being picked up early by their parents,” Farrell said. “None of us students knew what was going on yet.”

Twenty-eight-year-old Jasmine Ortiz, a junior at Lehman College, was out eating with friends when the attack struck on 9/11.

“Everyone surrounding me panicked,” Ortiz said. “Some people were crying, people frantically dialing their cells phones. It felt chaotic.”

REPORTED BY PHINEAS AZCUY, LAURA GUERRERO, SHEILLA AKWARA, LENNIN REYES, HEATHER MANGAL AND ALISON GREANEY