DOVER — For many Americans, the images and sounds of Sept. 11, 2001, are burned into their memories.
An idyllic late summer morning was interrupted by a brazen and brutal terrorist attack that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans who were on the doomed flights, working in buildings that became targets, or rushed to one of the three locations to try to save others.
An entire generation, however, has grown up with 9/11 as a faint memory, or as something confined to the history books (or websites). That includes the younger men and women who teach in Catholic schools. For Holy Cross School principal Mallory O’Mara-Tunell, keeping current students and others informed about that day — and about those who put their lives on the line for others — is very personal.
O’Mara-Tunell was just 4 years old the day of the attacks, living on Staten Island, N.Y., where it seemed everybody knew someone who was personally affected. Her family suffered a tragic loss as her uncle, Brian Cannizzaro, was one of 343 New York City firefighters who perished that day in the Twin Towers. Many of her family’s friends and neighbors also had loved ones die. Her father, Tom O’Mara, a corrections officer in New York City, helped with the cleanup of Ground Zero.
“I don’t know if I remember it through other people telling me about it over and over, or if it’s an actual memory,” she said. “But I do have very vivid images.”
She recalled that her clearest memory is from November 2001 when the family received word that Cannizzaro’s remains had been found.
“I remember sitting with my whole family and my father rushing down the stairs screaming, ‘They found him!’ and he just left. The rest of us were just left sitting there,” she said.
When she was a teacher at St. John the Beloved School in Wilmington, O’Mara-Tunell introduced age-appropriate lessons for the students. Holy Cross had done some lessons in the past, and this year, the school tied those lessons into “First Responders Day,” which was held Sept. 10 and included visits from state, Dover and Middletown police, Kent County Emergency Medical Services and others.
“If you weren’t living in it, you don’t understand the magnitude of it. So, I think that’s why it’s important that we do events like this to show the heroes and first responders, and then tie it all in with these lessons in the classroom,” she said.
Nick Klaus and his brother, Zachary, are in seventh and eighth grade, respectively, at Holy Cross. Nick, 12, said he has read a lot of books about Sept. 11, and he knows which airlines were affected and where the planes were crashed.
“People today don’t understand how important it was,” he said. “It didn’t change them much.” For people old enough to really remember it, “they felt the change of 9/11 in their hearts and throughout the world.”
Zachary, who turns 14 next week, said Holy Cross has done lessons on Sept. 11 in the past. He also has read a lot about that day. He said it is important that people remember what happened to the United States.
“It was such a big event, and it really changed a lot of things in America,” he said. “It made us feel more insecure that people can just come in and take over planes and do whatever they want with them. I think it told the government that we need to have better security.”
The lessons at Holy Cross were designed with the ages of the students in mind. The youngest students learned about first responders, O’Mara-Tunell said, and made them thank-you cards. The first through third grades looked at some photos and talked about what they felt, and they listed what they knew about Sept. 11. The older kids read about the day and did some writing and some reflections.
The goal, O’Mara-Tunell said, was not to scare them. It was to make them aware of this pivotal point in American history so that it, and the people who died that day, are never forgotten.
