11 reflections on 9/11: Jane Torres, Main Library technical services

I knew that Sept. 11 was going to be an unusually good day. It was my birthday.\nI am a IU Main Library employee and I knew that when I went to my desk that morning I would find cards from several of my co-workers and there would be the good-natured razzing about getting older. Later that evening I was being taken to dinner by my children. I'm one of the earlier people to arrive at work and sure enough, when I got there, there were cards on my desk. I had just made the decision regarding which sticker from a sheet that came in one of the cards to wear for the day -- I chose "Senior Citizen in Training." Seemed appropriate enough!\nWhen the "second wave" of people started coming in for the day, one of my co-workers came with startling news. On his way to work he had heard on the radio that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in NYC. This was shortly after 8 a.m. What he saw was that a second plane had just crashed into the south tower of the WTC.\nAs we gathered around his computer, we began to realize that something truly awful was happening in our country. We, as post-WWII children who didn't experience Pearl Harbor, had never before felt had that cold ripple of terror for our country's welfare that flowed though our bodies that morning. Those of us who were old enough to remember President Kennedy's assassination, were immediately reminded of the chaos that followed the shooting.\nI watched as students, faculty, and staff would wonder into the Library to watch one of the TVs that had been hurriedly set up. They stood silently in stunned disbelief as the latest news would come in.\nMy strongest feeling as that day progressed was one of guilt. Guilt that while we had a brilliantly beautiful sunny September day, just a couple hundred miles away, that same beautiful day had turned into a living hell for so many people.\nBut, the guilt was mixed with total thankfulness that I would walk out of my building at 5 p.m. and go home to my family as so many in the country would never do again. It had become quite clear to me that the day of my birth, 9/11, would forever be remembered as our Day of Infamy.