Those close to CMU, Mount Pleasant reflect on details, life lessons of 9/11

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There might be small details that bring us back to that day — a parent’s grimacing facial expression, the smell of something burning or the simple display of an American flag.

Close to 3,000 people died on 9/11 in a series of attacks CM Life in 2001 headlined as “Another Day of Infamy.”

Americans were glued to their television screens. Recurring images looked like something out of a disaster film. And 10 years later, people everywhere — including those with ties to Central Michigan University — can remember exactly where they were.

Vincent Cavataio, Student Government Association president, thought nothing was out of the ordinary that morning when he was called down to his school’s office to meet his mother.

Maybe he was going out to eat with family, the seventh-grader thought, after all, Sept. 11 is his mother’s birthday.

But 19 terrorists had hijacked four planes, and by the afternoon, both the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City had collapsed, a section of the Pentagon lay in ruins in Virginia and a plane had plummeted into a Pennsylvania field.

Cavataio has relatives who live in Manhattan, and walked into the school’s office to see his mother “in hysterics.” There they watched CNN as the second plane hit the Towers.

“And I will always remember that moment — the look on my mom’s face, the gasp, the not knowing what to say, then looking at me,” the Shelby Township senior said. “She just looked at me, and she didn’t know how to explain what was happening.”

However, not every kid in school learned of the events as they unfolded.

Rochester Hills senior Jacquelyn Keenan was like a lot of others, learning nothing of the attacks until she got home. The 11-year-old had a general understanding that buildings had been hit after her neighbor, who was in the National Guard, broke the news.

In the years that followed, Keenan said she went on to analyze the actual impact of the attacks and the awareness they spurred within her own family.

“The year after it happened, my mother wanted to put up an American flag, you know, because everybody was feeling patriotic,” she said. “And I remember we had to wait like three months … because everybody wanted one, and I remember thinking as a kid, ‘Wow, before I could just go get an American flag wherever.’”

Silent streets and disbelief

Sharon Hall could smell the twin towers burning from eight miles away at CMU’s off-campus location in Brooklyn, N.Y. The program administrator’s office is at Fort Hamilton, a military base that shut down in response to the attacks.

She’d been forced to park and walk a half-mile to gain access. Concern for family members was widespread among colleagues, she said, and their ability to contact them was limited.

But it was the walk to Fort Hamilton that Hall particularly recalled in the days leading up to the 10th anniversary of 9/11. No cars crossed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. No planes flew in the air. New York City had fallen silent.

“It was just an eerie feeling at that time because if you’re in New York, there’s always traffic,” she said. “There’s always some type of noise and everything was just shut down.”

At about the same time 200 miles away, Barbara Jenkins was following the person in front of her out of her office, down the stairs and out of the Pentagon. A CMU off-campus program administrator like Hall, Jenkins said she could see fire shooting out of the opposite side of the building as people poured into the parking lot.

No one had any idea that a plane had hit the building. It wasn’t until the news of the attacks in New York made its way to the capital that people began to connect the dots.

She, along with many others, walked to the nearby Pentagon Mall, where long lines formed at pay phones. People lost cell service and corridors of the closest highway were closed.

Jenkins remembers people driving by in cars shouting their destinations, in case others were looking for rides. The metro system was also closed, and unable to make her way home to Maryland, she eventually stayed at the home of a colleague.

“No one really talked about what had transpired until maybe a couple weeks later, particularly when one of those individuals I commuted by train with was one of the people that lost their life,” Jenkins said. “It was a little difficult only because the last conversation we’d had was he going to take vacation with his family and he was going to Hawaii, and for some reason, he returned to work on that day.”

Two off-campus CMU students at the Pentagon also lost their lives that day, she said.

Hall said she kept her windows up as she traveled to her home — even farther from the towers than from the base. There, she said, the burning smell and a few particles from the collapsing buildings were in the air.

“It was just something that you couldn’t believe was happening,” she said.

Confusion on campus, elsewhere

Students on CMU’s campus on 9/11 spoke mostly of their shock and uncertainty of how the U.S. would react to the attacks.

One student told CM Life she first mistook televised news reports for a movie, calling the events a tragedy. Others sat in front of the Bovee University Center, holding signs in what they called “Sit here for peace.”

2002 CMU alumna Sarah Leach was in her senior year and CM Life’s editor in chief. She said she first realized the enormity of what happened walking into the newsroom.

She hadn’t left the hall but once that day for fresh air, but right away she said she noticed a definite “aura of fear and confusion on campus.” Students stood in the street and leaned against trees — in tears.

Officer Jeff Browne of Mount Pleasant Police had worked the midnight shift and was sleeping when news of the attacks awoke him.

He said officers were called into his agency, as issues with traffic emerged and the city was put on standby to keep the public safe and “at peace.” Vehicles raced to local Mount Pleasant gas stations to fill up in fear of a shortage, price increases or something worse.

Vince Cavataio’s grandparents were at his house when he and his mother arrived home. He said they tried to put the attacks into context for him.

In Detroit, his father had been in a meeting at the Renaissance Center, which was under lockdown. The inability to reach him, Cavataio said, was an added stress.

He said he later talked with his cousin who was in her first week at a high school in lower Manhattan, and the way she described a sense of pandemonium was foreign to Cavataio.

“Just people flooding the streets from the school. They just left. And subways weren’t running. There were people all over the place, and no one knew where to go,” Cavataio said. “And we kept trying to contact family members. I remember we did get in contact with some, but others we had no way to contact them because phone lines were down.”

It wasn’t until Leach left CMU’s main campus at 2 a.m. the next day, she said, that she let herself lose composure. She hadn’t shown any emotion that day, but broke down crying on the car ride home.

“I thought the world might end,” she said. “That feeling will always stay with me. It will always be a little bit of a fear inside of me that something like that could possibly happen again.”

Taking life lessons to heart

In the weeks and months that followed 9/11, Keenan said she learned the attacks weren’t something that affected only the U.S.

She said with the start of the War on Terror, her neighbor was called to Afghanistan. Suddenly, the individual she knew to tend to yards and trim lawns was in a National Guard uniform.

“I remember (thinking), ‘I know this person. I’ve known him, he’s a family friend, and now he’s fighting in a war,’ which you know, is kind of difficult to understand as a kid,” Keenan said.

She wasn’t alone when it came to having realizations after the attacks.

Browne learned just how thankful the public became. Before, he said, policemen had just been the ones to write them tickets and citations.

“People would come up and say, ‘Thank you for doing what you do,’” Browne said. “You know, ‘Thanks for keeping us safe,’ or ‘Thanks for working the midnight shift.’ Even though we had nothing to do with what happened in New York, I think people were more thankful for what they had and where they lived.’”

Jenkins said the events on 9/11 solidified a lesson in her that no matter how dangerous the world becomes or what events take place, not to let it instill a fear in the way she lives.

Some people, she said, had not returned to work at the Pentagon. She remained, crediting her 18 and a half years in the U.S. Army in bearing the experience. She said she does hope talking about it helps others come to the same conclusion.

“If someone wants to do something, regardless of how many safe guards we have in place, if someone is determined enough to do harm to others, then they’re going to find a way to do it,” Jenkins said. “Our best bet is to try and pull together.”