- November 18, 2024
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Flagler Palm Coast High School junior and Air Force JROTC cadet Hannah Visintin was 3 when the planes hit the World Trade Center, and she remembers it. In two years, when she graduates, the students still in high school will all be too young.
“I remember sitting on the couch with my mom, seeing the clips, but very faintly ... you just got the vibe off everyone when it was happening, when it was there, that it was really bad.” she said. “I really started learning about it through the ceremonies and everything in elementary school.”
For the past 12 years, FPC Air Force JROTC instructor Lt. Col. Thomas Snodgrass has led the kind of school remembrance ceremonies that form a large part of how kids recall and understand that day. He’s watched the changes in perception as the students get younger. Most of this year’s freshmen were 1 when the planes hit the towers, and many of next year’s freshmen wouldn’t have been born yet.
“Since the time is farther and farther distant, it’s like they gain knowledge that they didn’t have; they all of a sudden have an understanding that danger lurks, and there is evil in the world,” he said. “You can see the light go on. It’s like ‘Wow, we’re not indestructible. Bad things can happen if we don’t take proper precautions.’”
FPC student Denis Dineen, 17, was four when 9/11 happened but didn’t begin to understand what it meant until kindergarten, when he went to his first remembrance ceremony. He thinks the attacks had a major impact on his generation, even those who don’t remember it well, by motivating young people to sign up for the military or professions like firefighting or police work.
A growing understanding of the attacks, he said, made him realize as a young child that there was a broader world outside the U.S., not all of it friendly.
“It kind of opens us up to the fact that there are people who do not agree with the beliefs that our country has, and that it’s such a main power in the world,” he said.
Jayson Dwyer, a 14-year-old freshman, was just 1 when the 9/11 happened, and to him that day is “like the Great Depression, or World War II — something that you read about in history textbooks. You understand that it was a bad thing, but it’s not something you experienced personally.”
Freshman Hannah Umpenhour, 13, said, “They talked about it in school, but I don’t think it actually hit me until first grade, second grade. And then I started to realize that it could actually happen.”
Part of the ceremony is making an attack that was so unbelievable real to those too young to clearly remember, Snodgrass said.
“It’s the reason we do this, is to keep them aware of what happened, and what could happen again,” he said. “And we try to give credit to not only the military, but the police, the firefighters, all the branches of the service and also the civilians … that showed how the country comes together in a time of need.”
This year, he said, about 30 students from the JROTC program, the band, the chorus and the dance program will participate in the 911 ceremony.
At the school’s 9/11 ceremonies, he said, “You can feel it in the room, the patriotic feeling building. You can sense it, you can feel it, you can see it, you can hear it. … You will see the students cry; you will see students celebrate the beauty of America. There are students who will thank you for recognizing the Americans who fight and Americans who have been lost.”
And after the ceremony, he said, “You know that they’re walking out there more patriotic, more appreciative of what they have. They talk more respectfully. They walk more respectfully. You can see the pride in their eyes.”
