It’s been fourteen years, but David Rowe, English and AVID teacher, still remembers the chill in his heart when he found out the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center had been hit by terrorists on September 11^th.

Rowe got to Cherry Creek High School around 6 A.M. as usual. Dr. Harry Kelleher, another English teacher, came in a little before 7 A.M. and said he heard a plane had crashed into the one of the Twin Towers. Kelleher and Rowe went into the classroom next door and turned on the T.V.

”At that point, everyone is thinking, ‘it’s probably just a small plane’,” Rowe recalls. He continued by saying, “I figured oh no, maybe someone had a seizure, lost control and that person is dead. Are other people going to be dead on that floor?”

As Rowe watched on T.V., the second plane crashed into the other tower.

“I can still remember the chill going through my heart because you realize everything’s changed,” he said. “This isn’t just an accident, somebody in a small plane who has a seizure and flies into one of the Twin Towers, this is something else.”

First period was about to start, and Rowe had to decide what to tell his students. He let them watch a little of the coverage before they started class. Then, he let them turn it back on before 8 A.M. just as the second tower collapsed.

Watching the plane hit the tower and watching with his students as the tower fell are two moments he will never forget. “We realized, after the first tower fell, that the death and destruction was going to be so much more vast,” Rowe said.

The death toll that day and in days following reached 2,977, including 343 firefighters and twenty three police officers. Nineteen men hijacked four American commercial flights. Two planes hit the Trade Center, one hit the Pentagon, and the other, the destination unknown, crashed in a field as passengers tried to take control of the aircraft. As the details started to emerge, Rowe realized that “the world as we knew it was going to be forever changed.”

As word began to spread around Cherry Creek High School that morning, Principle Kathleen D. Smith, came on the P.A. She asked teachers to minimize the amount of media shown to students to limit the distressing images. School was not dismissed early, nor was it closed the following day.

Current Principal Ryan Silva, who at the time was teaching Spanish, recalls that day clearly. “It brought attention to terrorism that probably hadn’t been there before…not on that grand level,” he said.

Yoon Park, who teaches English at Cherry Creek now, was teaching at another high school. When she heard the news, she felt a sense of terror. Her cousin worked in the World Trade Center. “All that day was panic,” she said. “My mother and I didn’t know who to call. The lines were completely jammed.”

It was not until late in the night that she found out her cousin was safe and had been evacuated from his building, which was near the Twin Towers, before it collapsed.

Despite the death and destruction that occurred that day, the teachers agreed one positive thing came out of the attacks: the events made students at Creek closer.

“One thing that makes this school strong is that whenever something happens, people really come together here,” said Yael Abrahamsson. “There was a lot of solidarity, a lot of people comforting each other.”

Rowe remembers not letting his students go right at the bell. “I said, ‘You just have to stay with me. I need to know you are okay. We can’t always protect you from the reality of the world, but I want you to know how to deal with it.’ ” The September 11 attacks have a special place in many peoples’ hearts. One thing is for sure, the Bruin community will continue to unite under the collective experience.