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Thinking Like A Historian

 

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my wife and I were living in Boulder, Colorado, where I was completing a doctorate in American history. We had a precious newborn son, not yet four months old. Between the constant work of graduate school and baby feedings, there were many late nights.

I was awakened early that morning by a phone call from my brother. He was two time zones away from me, calling from Charleston, South Carolina. Something was clearly wrong.

“Are you watching TV?”

He was animated, breathless, almost as if he had been out jogging on the beach.

“No, man,” I replied. “You just woke me up. It's ten after seven here. What’s going on?”

“Someone just outdid Timothy McVeigh.”

This was all I needed to hear to know that something awful had just occurred.  And in fact, as I was soon to learn, an airplane had just been flown deliberately into the World Trade Center’s South Tower.  Roughly twenty minutes earlier, a first plane had crashed into the North Tower. America was under attack.

I tell this story to my students today and immediately have to give them the context: namely, who was Timothy McVeigh? The answer weaves from the militia movements of the 1990s, to the Branch Davidians in Waco, to McVeigh’s pulling a Ryder rental truck full of ammonium nitrate in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, where his homemade bomb killed 168 men, women, and children. That’s part of the story I tell in a lesson that often concludes with the message that, throughout that day on 9/11, I vividly recall thinking like a historian and saying aloud to my oblivious 4 month old: “How are you going to tell this story...and process it... ten, twenty, fifty, and maybe one hundred years from now?”

The stories here will bring out all of the human emotions possible. You will laugh, and you will cry. And there will be moments, dear reader, where you will feel absolute anger. There will be moments where you think, wow, I can't believe a student found this person to interview...what an amazing story. The people here who have so generously allowed us to publish their stories may have a different perspective than you. They may think that America's response to 9/11, which included military action in Afghanistan, was right, or wrong. They may think that the invasion of Iraq was wholly and completely necessary, or perhaps they will present it as a terrible blunder. They may draw connections between 9/11 and current events in a way that makes them sound like they recorded your very words, or they may draw connections that you completely disagree with and that upset you greatly. Allow me to suggest to you what I tell my students every day: Even when we think like historians and sift through sources from the past with what we think is an objective eye, we bring significant baggage to the table. It's clearly the case when we deal with events that are recent to our memory and to a collective political consciousness. Regardless, we need to listen to every voice and treat each other with respect and dignity. Learning does not happen if we yell and scream or stomp out of the room. In other words, I encourage you to read every word whether you disagree with the person or not.

Let me discuss briefly the process for creating these oral histories. Traditionally, my students have worked on this project after an entire year of studying American history with me. Typically, we complete the project in the weeks following the AP exam in May. The exception to this was this semester, the Fall semester of 2021. Because of the 20th anniversary, I felt that it was necessary to have the students begin the year with 9/11. Prior to the interviews, students read selections from the historian Ernest May's abridged The 9/11 Commission Report, part of the wonderful Bedford/St. Martin's series of short histories, with documents, known as The Bedford Series in History and Culture. That series covers just about any topic imaginable in the American experience. The students also read parts of Garrett M. Graff's excellent book The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. We also often read selections from various works by the late Studs Terkel, who, in addition to having one of the best names known to man, was the greatest practitioner of oral history this country has produced. I also ask the students to watch two incredible documentaries (among many) on 9/11. One is The Falling Man (2006) and the other is the ESPN short, The Man in the Red Bandana (2017). For my students, especially the ones in recent years who were not yet alive on 9/11, these two films capture the horror and the heroism of the day perfectly. 

The simple instructions for the students were and are to do an interview in person, either face to face, or via phone, Skype, or now, Zoom. The students are then allowed to follow up with email. The end result is to be distilled and edited from those conversations into a readable story that reads in the first person. Some of the standard questions are: 

Tell me about 9/11. Where were you? How did you learn of what was happening around the country that morning? 

How did you contextualize it? What were your first thoughts?

How did your understanding of the events change as time unfolded? 

Did your life change in any tangible way because of 9/11? Did you as a person change in any way? 

What did America learn from 9/11? How did the country change? 

Close readers will note that there are factual errors in some of these stories. I have found, actually, that the vast majority of people don't really recall, for example, that only 17 minutes separated American Flight 11's crash into the North Tower from United Flight 175's crash into the South Tower. My guess is that many people, like me, were not pulled into the news until after the second crash, when it became obvious to anyone watching that this was not a Cessna, a news helicopter, or some other small aircraft, that had flown off course. Some of the things people describe doing in those seventeen minutes are likely impossible. But we all remember what it felt like to see that second plane fly into the building on TV, whether we saw it live, or on the loop of tape we have all seen now countless times. Memory is a tricky thing, and a lot of people claim to have seen the second plane live on TV. I used to think that I had seen it live, too, but in conversations over the years with my wife and brother, I realize now that I only got that phone call when it was obvious that the U.S. was under attack. Many people have also forgotten that the South Tower, the second to be hit, collapsed first. Ultimately, these facts are not what the students were seeking, or why we as readers should read the interviews. The details of some of the stories, even if they are factually off a bit, still capture the essence of that chaotic day and the days that followed. Ultimately, it is peoples' perspectives about everything in and around 9/11 that are most interesting.

For clarity's sake, I have done minor edits here and there where a student did not use a comma, a semi-colon, or some other necessary punctuation in their written interview. I have also changed some words in a few interviews, in particular the F word, which was used occasionally. Although that word carries a certain emphatic vivacity at times, I felt, given that this site will be read by many middle school students, that those few edited interviews don't lose any of their weight in a more PG-13 version. 

Eight years ago, I began asking my students to interview someone, anyone who was alive on 9/11 and who would be willing to share their own story about the day. In the school year of 2018-19, my four month old son back in 2001 was then 17 and a student in my APUSH class. When I looked at him on 9/11 and wondered how he would tell the story of and make sense of that awful day, I could never have imagined that twenty years later, I would share his interview with the world on a web page. In his oral history (his name is also Duke Richey), with former NFL coach Ricky Thomas, we are reminded that everything stopped for awhile after 9/11 as professional sports leagues cancelled games. When Thomas's team, the Tampa Bay Bucs, returned in week three at Minnesota, before the coin toss the coaches and officials joined members of the military in holding a huge flag that covered the field. Many people, including Thomas, talk here about how there was this moment of great unity in America after 9/11. And that unity was so palpable in the wake of the attacks by outsiders, because before 9/11, as my brother's comment about Timothy McVeigh that morning reminds us, America was terribly torn and divided within. 

I am hopeful, as you read these narratives, that in remembering 9/11, we not only honor all of those people who died, as well as the families who lost loved ones, but that we recall--or understand anew--what Coach Thomas meant in his interview with my son when he said  that "after 9/11, I had a greater appreciation of how precious life is." As the US has recently left Afghanistan, dramatically after 20 years, with many unfortunate deaths and tragedy, we are reminded again of what we all felt and what Ricky articulated so well in his interview: All life is precious.

Knowing our history, and thinking like a historian is a privilege I get to take part in every day as my job, and it gives me the greatest pleasure to now share with you the work of my amazing students.

Duke Richey '86
Sen. Howard Baker Jr. ’43 Chair of American History

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If you have a 9/11 story and would like to be

interviewed by a McCallie student about your experience,

please contact Dr. Duke Richey at drichey@mccallie.org

Father Brad Whitaker serves at the rector at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in downtown Chattanooga. Twenty years ago, he was living and working in New Jersey and served as a Chaplain at Trinity Church at Ground Zero after the September 11 terrorist attacks. He spoke to Upper School students during Chapel on Friday, September 10, 2021.

Watch his talk here: