Students urged to remember

HAMPDEN – Students in Pam Snow’s English class at Hampden Academy took out their pens Tuesday, aiming to write for posterity instead of for their teacher.

“Use good, dark ink so it will last – this needs to be preserved on paper for your children and your children’s children,” Snow told the sophomores in her expository writing class.

Asking students to record their impressions of Tuesday’s tragic events in New York and Washington, D.C., made sense as they had been learning to write descriptive essays.

But Snow had another reason for the assignment that she didn’t intend to read, but would have each student bring home tucked into an envelope.

A high school sophomore when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Snow vividly recalled the moment she and other Lee Academy students were told about the tragedy.

“We knew something horrible had happened. There was a palpable silence. I remember hearing the seats creaking. Then people started to weep,” said Snow, who wished she had written about her impressions.

Now in the wake of Tuesday’s disaster, her students would have a chance to record their own reactions.

“This is a moment in history that will be so profoundly important that you can’t even imagine it,” she told them.

“You’ll remember this for the rest of your life. You’ll be the primary source of information because you witnessed firsthand people’s reactions.”

The event wants describing, she told the students. But think before you write; look around, she urged.

“This is a hot, sultry day. It’s beautiful, but the weather isn’t even right! It’s too hot!

“This is like Pearl Harbor, like Kennedy’s assassination,” she said.

“We don’t even know yet how big this is.”

Before they wrote, the kids had a chance to talk.

“We think of ourselves as a big, strong, invincible country. That some terrorist could have pulled this off so easily came as a shock,” said one boy.

“It’s amazing how many people are saying how this didn’t affect us, but we’re all intertwined and this is our country,” said a girl.

Another student was amazed at the number of classmates who personally knew someone involved.

“There are three or four in every class who knew people in the [World Trade] Tower and the Pentagon and the surrounding area,” said a boy.

Coincidentally, it had been Snow’s son, Ben King, 28, with an office down the street from the World Trade Center, who first alerted the school to the tragedy just before 9 a.m.

With a direct view of the towers, King called his mother at school and told her what was happening as events unfolded before his eyes.

“New York’s in chaos. It’s right upside down,” he told her.

Students gathered during the day to watch televisions that were placed throughout the school.

Librarian Beth Davenport looked at the 60 teen-agers sitting silently, eyes riveted on the screen while Mayor Rudolph Giuliani spoke about the chaos in New York City.

The library had been full all day as students checked for the latest update, she said.

Some were upset and crying. Most were “pretty subdued.”

“This is the quietest I’ve ever seen them,” she said.