Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the most tragic one-day event to happen to the U.S. The day people realized they would never be fully safe was when the Twin Towers were hit in New York City by Flights 11 and 175, Flight 73 hit near the Pentagon and Flight 93 crashed in an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Looking back on the catastrophe, NKU professors were in different places but remember where they were when the unimaginable happened.

Many couldn’t believe what was happening when the first plane hit one of the towers. It reminded Professor John Alberti of when a plane crashed into the Empire State Building by mistake. He thought this may have been just another accident.

“Maybe, some single-engine plane had crashed into the building,” Alberti said.

Some thought it meant war. Professor John Gibson thought back when Japan attacked the U.S. and imagined people waking up with those same questions on 9/11.

“This is our generation’s Pearl Harbor. This is what they would have been waking up to and wondering what is going on, what’s next, how’s my family?” said Gibson.

Professor and Northerner Advisor Annie Hammock, who was a CNN producer at the network’s headquarters in Atlanta remembers seeing news footage of people jumping from the towers as she stood in the satellite center.

“We did not air that, except maybe once before anybody realized what was happening, and then as soon as we realized— oh, my God! Those are people, and they’re jumping off. And we stopped showing it,” Hammock said.

Gibson was a junior, studying history and political science, at Murray State University and was sleeping when the first plane hit, since he did not have class until later that day.

It wasn’t until a friend of his woke him up with a bang from the metal door of his dorm room that he found out about the first plane.

“He bolts down the stairs of our dorm room, comes in and, like, kicks my door open and turns on the TV. He was like, ‘Wake up, wake up!’ I’m like, ‘What? What’s going on?’” Gibson said.

On the screen was NBC showing live exterior shots of the burning North Tower, and a few minutes later the second plane hit. Gibson remembers being in a total daze as he watched the events unfold.

No one knew “the full scope” of what was occurring. Was it just the two planes, or were there more coming?

Shortly after, he remembered calling his political science professor, who taught the class he was attending later that day, to see if it would still be happening.

“He seemed sad on the phone, and it was brief, and from a tone I hadn’t heard from this man before. I had him for several classes, and he was strict as all get out, but I liked that. My reflection is that he knew this was terrible, and knew that this would get bad for Muslim Americans,” said Gibson.

His professor, Doctor Farouk Umar, was an Iraqi American who immigrated to the U.S. years ago, and Gibson thought he had a hunch about how people may respond negatively toward immigrants after the attacks.

“While as united as many of us became as a nation, unfortunately, many people became united against Muslim Americans and Muslims in general and Islam, and it was very, very terrible in that sense. And so I think he was carrying some of that weight too, knowing what was maybe going to transpire,” Gibson said.

Something Gibson will never forget is how campus life changed after everything happened. There was so much tension between everyone that night; little things would set people off.

“I think what it was was everybody had so much tension and aggression and fear and everything built up that nobody could focus, and the only thing we could focus on was this frustration and this anger of, like, this thing that had happened. And I remember, people you would not even expect getting angry at each other or getting into a fight,” Gibson said.

Around 8:30 p.m., everyone got together in the game room of Gibson’s dorm, crowded around the wall-mounted television, and listened to President Bush’s speech to the nation.

No one made a sound, and during that time no one was thinking of their own political beliefs. The only thing they cared about was getting some kind of an answer, which was not given.

“Bush was the first election for many of us at that age, whether you voted for him or not. There was still some comfort hearing from a leader who could speak, you know, who could kind of encapsulate some of the fears and stuff that people were feeling, and put it out there,” Gibson said.

The day started normally for Professor John Alberti. He was in his office, going through email and over logistics for guest speaker Lucy Grealy, who would be flying on Delta the next day from New York City to talk about her book ‘Autobiography of a Face.’

In between emails, the academic coordinator of the first-year programs called him, saying “Oh, I guess we’re going to have to postpone it,” because of the plane crash. Confused, he asked what plane crash she was talking about. He was shocked and didn’t believe her when she answered, “The plane that crashed into the World Trade Center.”

He thought she assumed he already knew, but he did not understand what she was talking about until he went down to the department office in Landrum 500, then known as the Office of Literature and Language. There, he saw people gathered around a portable black-and-white television the academic coordinator had, watching the live news coverage..

“The TV news was covering what we learned then with the attacks in New York [City],” Alberti said.

While watching the news, Flight 175 hit the South Tower. That was when Alberti realized this was not some bad air traffic control, and something major was occurring.

Professor Annie Hammock was getting ready for work at CNN when her husband came into the bedroom talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. Hammock thought it was “weird,” but that things like that can happen sometimes.

She thought it was a sightseeing plane, but her husband corrected her, saying it was a jet. Hearing that, Hammock ran into the living room and turned on the TV right as the second plane hit.

Seeing this happen, she rushed to get ready for work. On the way there, she turned on NPR to learn the Pentagon was hit.

Professor Daryl Wiesman had just arrived in Cincinnati, after a weekend trip to Amelia Island in Florida to celebrate his colleague’s successful dissertation defense at Florida State University, where he was attending to the death of his mother-in-law.

At 9 a.m. he was woken up by his sister-in-law calling about a plane hitting the World Trade Center.

“We turned on the television and saw the tower burning,” said Wiesman.

Wiesman and his family had no knowledge of what was happening; they thought a plane had just accidentally hit the North Tower until, a short while later, the second plane hit the South Tower.

“Then your stomach turned to say something’s going on here, but again, we didn’t know what was going on. I mean, [we] just couldn’t believe it. You couldn’t fathom it,” Wiesman said.

When the tower collapsed, he waited for the smoke to clear to reveal the building again so he could really see it because he just couldn’t comprehend it.

Watching the towers collapse, the Pentagon being targeted, the plane crashing in Pennsylvania on the same day, he didn’t know if this would be happening in other major cities like Chicago, Seattle or San Francisco.

Professor Joan Ferrante was about to teach a Research Methods class at 9 a.m. when she was first told about Flight 11 hitting the North Tower.

After hearing the news, she didn’t know whether to still hold class because there was supposed to be a test that day. In the end, Ferrante decided to have class, but instead of taking the test, they just watched the news together on the television in the classroom.

“It was just like you’re frozen, you know, like you don’t really know what to do, and you’re kind of here, hearing it. But I’m also not in front of anything to see it; I’m just hearing about this, and so we decided to watch it,” Farrate said.

After pulling into the parking lot of CNN, Hammock felt this awful pit in her stomach, knowing there was something wrong. She didn’t know what it was since foreign terrorism in the U.S. was unknown.

“People bringing terror over here from other countries just didn’t happen. So it was like, you know, it was obviously a coordinated attack of some kind, but the full weight of it hadn’t settled in on me yet. But I felt heavy, and I knew something was terribly wrong,” Hammock said.

Alberti and his co-workers were panicking while staring at the TV screen. Alberti was worried that this was some kind of war strike and was deeply concerned for his students if a war was going to occur.

“We had no idea what the action of the government would be, but this could lead to armed conflict. If a war is going to be fought, countries fight the war with their young people,” Alberti said.

He also didn’t know who the attackers were and how long these attacks were going to last. No one knew if that was the case or if more attacks would follow.

Alberti’s 11-year-old daughter was in the sixth grade at the time, and despite the day’s events, he thought school was the safest place for her to be. His wife worked that day as well, and while he doesn’t recall when they spoke, neither Alberti or his wife were concerned about there being a potential attack on Cincinnati to the point of having to pull their daughter out of school.

He was also scared for Lucy Grealy, with her living in New York City. Smartphones were not around yet, so he sent her what was the strangest email to write, checking in to see if she was alive.

“At the same time, because it seems kind of strange now, but in a way, like dealing with small practical details, [it] gave you a sense of control. So we were spending university money to fly her in. We had these tickets with Delta Air Lines, and would she? Could we have this later? Like, were the airlines flying?” Alberti said.

So he decided to call Delta to get answers, and Delta responded with a blanket message telling everyone all planes were grounded, refunds would be issued when they got around to it and it was an ongoing situation.

The event was later rescheduled in the following weeks after discussing it with the first-year programs.

Alberti later heard back from Grealy that she was okay but had walked from Manhattan to Brooklyn through the smoke and ash to a friend’s house in Brooklyn. But she was able to come down next week.

After sorting things out with Grealy, Alberti remembered his English 101 class he had that afternoon and didn’t know whether to have class or call it off.

“I was facing the prospect. I’m going to walk into class and say, ‘Hey, what’s up, guys?’ I mean, it seemed ridiculous to have a regular class, but I didn’t just want to cancel it. For one thing, again, that was much harder to do. We didn’t have Canvas,” he said.

After contacting the University 101 instructor, both professors decided to combine their classes rather than dismiss them, as their students were in the same learning community. The class moved to the Administrative Center in the Lucas Administrative Building to watch the live network broadcast. It was one of the few classrooms that had network television channels at the time.

Most of the students were there, but some parents called them home, or they decided to go home, which was understandable.

At the combined class, NBC TV was shown on the television, which was still very chaotic.

“I remember the only words of wisdom I had for the students were, ‘What we’re hearing on the television now, the reporters are all doing their best in giving us the information they have, but one thing I know is all of this information is going to be changing over the course of the following days as they get more and more information. So you’ll hear things today that are not necessarily what is really going on, and just keep in mind that news is fluid, especially something like this,’” Alberti said.

Weeks later, anytime a plane flew nearby, a feeling of fear would overcome Gibson.

He remembers being in his parents’ garage working on a stop-motion movie and hearing a plane fly overhead.

“I would like, tense up, like, just these little moments that are like a collective trauma that I think many people felt,” Gibson said.

Hammock had to push down her feelings of sadness and grief to be able to get the news out and focus on her work.

She and her colleagues buried themselves in their work to avoid addressing their emotions.

“I dealt with PTSD then, and I had a lot. I had therapy immediately after, and on and off over the years, to completely reconcile the grief, the fear… My colleagues still do, because they never got therapy. We all lived in fear,” Hammock said.

After The Aviation and Transportation Security Act was passed on November 19th, 2001, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) became established. As a result, increased security was everywhere.

A group of students started the first NKU Muslim Students Association by the end of the week, which attracted no attention, as it was just another student group.

They would meet every week on Fridays to pray in a classroom. Many people of all ethnic backgrounds attended these prayer sessions to tell them NKU is still a safe place for you, even with the anti-Muslim hysteria.

“You know that being Muslim doesn’t mean you were involved in these attacks or that you had anything to do with it,” Alberti said.

NKU was still concerned about what could happen, who might show up.

The following weeks blended as people wondered if there would be more attacks and what cities could be next.

“It was kind of weird too, because on the one hand there was fear that your city would be attacked, but on the other hand, there’s this weird kind of argument, almost like a defensiveness, that no, Cincinnati is worthy of being attacked. It just struck me, as a personal observation, why would terrorists come to Cincinnati?” Alberti said.

After 9/11, Hammock said it helped her become a better journalist, knowing that she can now get through the worst of anything, and this made her more confident in her abilities.

“I think it just reinforced my commitment and my passion for making sure the story gets out, no matter how difficult it is, and work. Those weeks and months were exhausting, but there was never a doubt that I would keep going, and that was true of all my colleagues,” Hammock said.

One of the most disappointing things she believes came out of this traumatic event was how many turned against their Muslim neighbors in America.

“How Muslim Americans are treated in this country, how we perceive Muslim countries, how we engage with foreign leaders. I mean, this just had a huge impact globally,” Hammock said.

When looking back 25 years later, Gibson calls 2001 the turning point for many things nationally, politically, surveillance-wise and attitude-wise. Pre-2001 was pretty different from the world we had after 2001.

“I think about the fact that, yes, while we as a nation generally work together, we did also find it easy, like we do, to find scapegoats. People were quickly pointing fingers. And that’s something that stuck with me a lot more as we’ve gotten, I’ve gotten older,” Gibson said.

For Wiesman, it’s the fact that it can happen when you have no idea. His perspective on normal things like gazing up at a tall building are now different.

“You’re thinking, what if a plane hit that?” Wiesman said. “It’s in the back of my mind when I see or [when I] am up in tall buildings. Not an overthought, but it’s in the back of my mind. Always.”

When airlines resumed operations, they came back different, with new, strict TSA protocols. Traveling on airlines would never really be the same again. “You could meet family at the gates before departing. Family could just walk up to you waiting at the entrance of the landed plane…Things changed,” said Wiesman.

As the 25th anniversary approached, TSA launched the return to pre-2001 practices earlier this week under their TSA PreCheck program called Gateside across 13 participating airports. This allows PreCheck members and their families to apply 1-3 days before their flight for greetings and departures, layovers, and enjoy the airport without needing to fly.

Life after 9/11 will never be the same again; people born after will never know what life was like before.

Every year, we look back on that day and remember the people who were lost. We remember the firefighters, police officers, EMTs, paramedics, doctors, nurses, search-and-rescue workers, military personnel, construction workers and countless volunteers who risked or gave their lives to save anyone they could.

Although our country will never be the same, what we can do is remember the lives lost and keep their memory alive.