Prep Community Remembers 9/11 25 Years Later

First period had just ended and students were making their way through the crowded halls and stairways of Villiger Hall when rumors began circulating that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City.

It was the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, the second day of classes at St. Joe’s Prep. Teacher Mr. Bill Conners ‘80, in his room preparing to teach his government class, was alerted by a student he knew. Conners took his next class to the foyer, where one of his colleagues had rolled in a small TV and turned on a live broadcast of the events.

  Students watched as the Twin Towers burned, quickly understanding the gravity of the situation.

  “Everything stopped,” Conners recalled. “There’s no nonsense in the cafeteria. Nobody’s shooting baskets in the gym. Everybody knows immediately this is really bad.” 

Buses arrived early to take students home. Nobody knew if Philadelphia was also a potential target, Conners said.

All told, 2,977 people died in the terrorist attacks that day. Two planes had been flown into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon. A fourth plane crash-landed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The attacks were perpetrated by 19 hijackers, members of the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

School remained closed on Sept. 12, and a prayer service was held on Sept. 13. Over the following days, Conners made an effort to return to normal in his classes, but the attacks had had a significant impact on the Prep community.

“I was just trying to keep my classes as normal as possible,” Conners said. “It was like when COVID came, and you just don’t know how many people are going to die. That was like that, a little shock and a ‘well, tomorrow’s a school day.’” 

History teacher Mr. Leo Vaccaro ‘05, who was a freshman at the time, remembers classmates whose parents commuted to New York for work and who were worried for their family members’ safety. Among the victims of the attacks were alumnus Chris Clarke ‘86 and Johanna Sigmund, the daughter of a Prep alumnus. 

Mixed reactions from the student body about how the U.S. should respond to the attacks reflected that of the larger U.S. population. An issue of the Hawkeye printed Sept. 17, just six days after the attacks, features two op-eds written by two editors-in-chief.

“The military has to destroy all terrorist organizations, their bases, and anyone who gets in the way from eliminating this trash,” one editor wrote. 

Another editor countered, writing, “While I am also intensely angered by the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, I think that we should be looking for justice rather than vengeance.” 

He continued: “We must also avoid blaming our fellow Americans of Islam [sic] or Arab descent for these attacks…These men and women are in no way responsible for the terrorist actions and any attempts to get retribution against this group will only divide us when we must be joining together in solidarity.”

After 9/11, the U.S. experienced widespread xenophobia and Islamophobia, which affected not only Muslim and Arab Americans but other immigrants as well. Vaccaro remembered hearing someone shouting at his father, an Italian American, to “get out of the country.” 

Dean of Students, Mr. Albert Greene was working as an FBI agent in Lower Manhattan at the time and was at the World Trade Center aiding in the rescue effort shortly after a plane struck the second tower.

When he first arrived at the World Trade Center, Greene heard the sound of something hitting the ground and remembers thinking, “It must be bricks or something falling off the building.”

  He quickly realized the sound was “bodies hitting the ground.” 

And then the ground began to rumble. “All of a sudden, I see the top of the building open up…The building’s starting to come down,” he recalled.  Thinking, “I’m going to die,” he ran from the collapsing building and the dust cloud that followed. 

Greene continued to work at Ground Zero after Sept. 11, combing through the debris for survivors.

Last month, on the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Greene took the day off to attend a remembrance ceremony at the FBI office in New York. At the ceremony, officials held a roll call for agents who had died both on 9/11 and in the aftermath due to the conditions stemming from exposure to air contaminants. Nearly 50 names were called.

“I lost so many friends on that day,” he said. “It was different to hear their names called and see a representative stand up and say ‘present’ knowing that they weren’t present.”

Despite his traumatic experiences on Sept. 11, what lingers for Greene is how Americans united after the tragedy.

“I’ve never seen an event bring the country together the way 9/11 did,” he said.

Greene also stressed the importance of teaching those who didn’t experience the attacks about them, not only for the sake of honoring the victims and the sacrifice of first responders but also to ensure that no terrorist attacks of this scale happen again. 

“I wouldn’t want young people to assume that terrorism can’t happen in the U.S.,” he said. “Because it can. It did. There might be many who think ‘that only happens in the Middle East, right?’ It can happen here…We’re not immune.”