Hudson High School Honors 10th Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks

As part of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 300 Hudson High School students in the ninth-grade Modern World History classes created a memorial to honor the victims.

Prior to building the memorial, students were given the opportunity to learn and discuss the tragedy with their classes.  First, students read a handout familiarizing them with the situation.  Next, students watched a documentary recounting the day’s events.  Most students volunteered that they had little direct knowledge of the attacks as they were too young at that time. 

Therefore, this year students conducted oral interviews with others who had some prior memories as the day’s events unfolded.  Many students chose to interview their parents, grandparents, older siblings and teachers.

The interviewees’ stories were compelling.  Some interviewees lost family members in the tragedy.  Some lost co-workers.  Some were scheduled to work at the Twin Towers that day…but were late showing up to work due to conflicts with day care arrangements.

And…one former business client of an interviewee was on United Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, PA.

Students then selected a single word that described his/her feelings about the tragedy and repeatedly wrote that word on a shoebox wrapped in white paper.  Words selected this year included “sad, catastrophe, ‘let’s roll’ and unity.”

One student began by writing the names of each victim on a shoebox.  After completely covering two shoeboxes the student only got through letters A-C of the alphabetized list of victims.

After looking at slides of various memorials around the United States, the students used their completed shoeboxes as ‘bricks’ to collectively build a memorial.  Each class hour reported to the memorial site in the HHS Commons and was given 15 minutes to design and construct a memorial out of the available shoeboxes at hand.

Throughout the day more and more shoeboxes were added as participating classes reported to the commons, causing a change in both the design and the construction.  Various ideas were considered and tried:  towers, walkways, peace symbols, and a remembrance walls. The last class of the day decided to create a memorial representing the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

Chart paper on either side of the memorial was hung for all HHS students to leave reflective messages about Sept. 11.  An essay titled “Freedom Isn’t Free” – written in 1997 by LCDR Dan Shanower who later lost his life in the Pentagon attack – was posted behind the memorial.  Two red memorial flags completed the display.

Participating in this year’s project were students in Theresa Jenness, Val Wilwert and Matt Friedl’s classes.