9/11 - Ten Years Later

Recent USF graduate Ulysse Jean Baptiste was in school in his home country of France when news of the September 11th terrorist attacks were announced by the principal over the intercom system. Even across the Atlantic Ulysse was shaken. “It changed a lot about how I thought about our vulnerability, knowing that things could happen. That we are not 100 percent protected from the outside world. We did have terrorist attacks in France with the subway system, but it was never that kind of intensity,” he says referring to the 1995 Paris metro bombings, a series of attacks on the transit system that killed 8 and injured over a hundred. Ulysse moved to America to attend school. And while he tells himself that flight is the safest means of travel, his memory of the events does not fade. “Every time I go to take a flight somewhere I do think about it. Every single time. I don’t think it’s going to happen to me, but I just think that it actually did happen,” Ulysse said.

Stephanie Rucker, a student at USF, says the attacks of September 11th made her realize how inter-connected the world is. She was only an 8th grader in Ohio ten years ago, but Stephanie believes the tragic events gave her a broader prospective of her world. "It made people aware of their surroundings," she says. "It made me more aware of foreign affairs, and what was going on internationally." And Stephanie had an even better understanding of the magnitude of the attacks after she went to college in Connecticut and made trips to New York City. "I guess I didn't completely realize the impact until I went to New York City and saw everything in person, and saw the memorials. You just realize how important the jobs are of firefighters and policemen. It gives you a greater respect for those working in the community.”

When Sister Cathy Kahill thinks back to how she was the community coping with the events of September 11th, she remembers one specific event they were planning to host at the Franciscan Center, which at the time probably did not seem too different from handful they have every month." We had previously scheduled a talk at the Center for October 4th, 2001, the title of which was An Introduction to World Religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” Before September 11th they had expected to draw a small group, maybe a dozen, for a lively discussion with a local professor. But afterwards they saw an influx of interest in the topic. "Eventually we had to cut it off at forty-five people," Sister Kahill remembers. "What I saw was people wanting to understand the religious element to it. After 9/11 it was like, 'We better pay attention to why religions divide us'. I found people very open to hearing about different religions. And it made me more keenly aware of how interconnected we are with everyone, and how we can use anything – religion or whatever – to divide us."

The events of 9/11 didn’t change the world view of Charles Billi, owner of BigTampa.com and former Miami news anchor, but he believes it opened his eyes to many things. “We need to be vigilant. There are people out there who want to kill us, so we need to be paying attention. There will people who say, 'Why does the United States need to police the world?'. It's because somebody has to. If you don't, then who is going to?" Charles remembers the morning of September 11th, 2001 well. He had purchased his very first high definition television the night before. “We put it together so late in the evening that I never got a chance to watch it. So I said, ‘Oh, I'll watch it first thing in the morning'. And I turn on my brand new TV the next morning to this unfolding. So needless to say my thrill for my HDTV never happened, because I got to see disaster in HD. The first thing that I felt, I was shocked that someone was able to orchestrate an event of that magnitude and of the damage. To take down the World Trade Center towers. I mean, I don't think people actually stop and consider the magnitude of this. It was horrific.”

Tony Smith, 44, was not a firefighter when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened in 2001. It would be seven more years before Smith finally followed the advice of two nephews who were firefighters and follow their example by enrolling in a firefighter academy in Tampa. At the time, Smith was working two other jobs and wanted stability and better income. He initially wasn’t sure if the academy would pan out. But his attitude changed instantly during a training exercise when he heard a familiar sound. The loud chirping of his PASS (personal alert safety system) device brought back the horrifying aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that he’d watched on television. “Like most of us, I was watching the news on Sept. 11; and during the broadcast from Ground Zero I kept hearing a loud chirping sound. I remember thinking — ‘What is that? Man, that’s annoying. Can’t they shut that off?’ —  I learned at training that those chirps come from our PASS devices and that they don’t make that sound unless a firefighter isn’t moving. If you don’t move it chirps so that someone can find you. The chirping noises I heard that day on TV were being made by dead firefighters who were not moving. Right then, in that moment, I was so humbled to be even trying to pursue a career as a firefighter. It gave me clarity.” Smith joined Tampa Fire Rescue in 2008.