Defining a generation

Cameron Mattoon was sitting in math class at Tri North Middle School in Bloomington.

Mark Hoff was sitting in homeroom at a high school in Elkhart, Ind.

Madeline Girardi was in band practice in her Chicago middle school.

Everybody remembers what they were doing seven years ago today when they heard, or saw, that terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

“Older people say they remember when JFK got assassinated,” said sophomore Jennifer Marinaro. “That’s now our thing. We’ll always remember where we were and what we were doing when that happened.”

Most IU students were middle schoolers on Sept. 11 when more than 2,500 Americans were killed during terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa.

Today, students better realize – like their parents did decades ago – how a national tragedy changed everything.

Some, from national media to even a Facebook group, have called today’s young people the “9/11 Generation.”

The Facebook group is a place where students talk about where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.

Mattoon, now a sophomore, remembers the moment clearly.

“The passing period and the class before that, a lot of people were saying crazy rumors about New York and the White House,” Mattoon said. “I had no idea what was going on.”

He also didn’t know his uncle had an office in the Pentagon or his step-father was flying that day.

They were OK, his mother later told him.

“She was very stressed out and freaked,” Mattoon said. “The news didn’t turn off the television for days.”

Mattoon knows he’s not the only one who can remember the day in such vivid detail.

“I’ve talked to people, and just about everybody remembers where they first were when they heard about it,” he said.

Hoff, who is also now a sophomore, first heard the news broadcast from his school’s Public Address system.

“Then they played it (on television) for everyone to know what was going on,” he said.

He remembered his homeroom well.

“It was the first time I can remember our homeroom was quiet in a long time,” he said.

Hoff didn’t know anyone threatened by the attacks, and it took him years to fully understand its consequences.

“People talk about it now like a historical event,” he said. “Back then it was like a recent tragedy. ... Now we’ve started to understand why the attacks happened and why President Bush did what he did.”

Madeline Girardi, a sophomore, heard the news when her principal interrupted her band practice.

“It was kind of chaotic,” she said. “The teachers didn’t really know how to explain it to us or what to say about it.”
Like most students, Girardi didn’t comprehend it at the time.

“At first I didn’t understand what was going on,” she said. “It kind of sunk in the week of. As I get older I understand it more.
“How can someone do that to us?”

Marinaro was at an intermediate school in Noblesville, Ind.

“I was walking between classes, and one of the teachers turned on the TV,” she said.

But they didn’t stay on. Soon the principal made the teachers turn off the TVs, and Marino didn’t hear about it again until she went home and watched the news with her mom.

“It was very shocking,” Marino said. “I don’t think there’s really any other way to describe it.”

Students will always remember the attacks – where they were and who they were with – but as they get older, they understand them differently.

“I think that is our generation’s big moment that shakes everything up,” Mattoon said. “And the U.S. will never be the same.”