WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE EARTH STOOD STILL

The physical destruction of this act of terrorism may have taken place far from Arizona, but the reverberations immediately spread across the world. At SCC and within our community, individuals connected to the event – both directly and indirectly – share their stories whether near the center of the devastation, linked to the victims, or impacted by the bigotry that followed. A decade has passed, representing a period of reflection, and the desire that peace shall persevere in the face of darkness.

Attacks Alarm

"The sky was a bright blue, not a cloud in the sky, and I remember I had my in-room coffee and I was staring out at the Trade Center, thinking ‘man, what a beautiful city this is,'" Tom Hansen, educational faculty department instructor, said as he recalled the fateful Tuesday morning. 

Hansen, a Mesa elementary school principal at the time, traveled to Manhattan in September 2001 to attend a workshop at Columbia University.

He and other conference members arrived in New York City on Saturday. When the eatery they planned on dining at on Sunday morning was closed, they headed to the Trade Center for breakfast – where they had originally intended on eating on Tuesday.

"Obviously, you look back at it and say, ‘had that restaurant (near the hotel) not been renovated, we would have been at the Trade Center on Tuesday,'" Hansen said.

When presentations began on Tuesday at Columbia, Hansen recalled an attendee answering a phone call in the middle of a meeting. 

"You could read his eyes, and there was panic there," he said, of the New York native.

Meanwhile, in mid-town Manhattan, Peggy McIntyre, sister-in-law of Patrice Daigle of SCC Fiscal Tech, heard the same news from her apartment. 

"I was listening to the radio, getting ready to leave for work, and I heard on the radio that there was a fire at the World Trade Center," McIntyre said. "Within a minute, the radio went dead, and I knew that the radio station had its antenna at the World Trade Center... I turned on the television, so I saw the second one (plane) hit the towers."

Forty minutes later, at 9:43 A.M., American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon.

Sara Mercill, adjunct faculty of SCC's CIS/BPC department, was visiting her husband's family in Arlington, mere miles from the Pentagon.

"The phone kept ringing… we didn't answer it, and finally my husband got up and answered it," Mercill said. "It was his dad calling, saying ‘hey, we're being bombed.' So I turned on the TV at that moment and saw the first World Tower fall right then."

In Arizona, John Kavanagh, director of SCC's Administrative of Justice Studies program, also observed the tragedy unfold.

"All you could do was watch in horror," Kavanagh said. This hit close to home; for two decades, Kavanagh served in the Port Authority Police Department in New York and New Jersey, where he worked close to the towers.