Local News

From fire drills to lockdowns, days of service, 9/11 changed schools

LINCOLN -- Interventionist Gail Gombos and Literacy Coach Sue Elmer were working at Alcona Elementary School on Sept. 11, 2001 when they began hearing news that a plane had crashed in New York.

Gombos, who was breastfeeding her youngest child at the time, said her husband brought her to the school to nurse when he began telling her about a plane crash in New York.

"I walked out of the office after feeding her and I could tell by everybody's face that it was pretty serious," she said.

That plane crash turned out to be deliberate. Terrorists hijacked four planes, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York and one into the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth intentional crashing was thwarted by passengers who forced the plane down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Experts believe that plane may have been headed for the White House or the U.S. Capitol.

Those attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, pulled the U.S. into war with militant Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and Iraq, wars that killed more than 6,000 additional American service members and contractors over the following two decades.

Elmer said she remembers hearing about a plane that had crashed in New York. She said they didn't realize at the time what was happening, but they felt something wasn't right.

News continued to trickle in as kids came in tardy or parents dropped off kids returning from doctors appointments. She said it was late morning -- maybe around 11 a.m. -- when an emergency meeting was called at the school.

"I just remember a sense of sadness and fear," Elmer said. "Part of me wanted to keep all of our kids here because you didn't know what was going on. It was so different than anything in our lifetime than you had ever experienced."

Elmer, who had gown up with family in the military, said terrorism wasn't a thing people thought about at that time.

Meanwhile, Gombos said that, while they tried to keep normalcy in the classroom, they also wanted to know what was going on.

"It was very much a juggle of wanting to get information, but keeping normalcy for the children," she said.

Gombos said that, after that morning's emergency meeting, teachers calmly informed the kids that a major event had happened and let them know they were safe.

Elmer said school was not dismissed early that day.

Twenty years since the terrorist attacks, Gombos said technology has really changed. She said if something like that were to happen today, they would be able to get updates quickly on cell phones and computers, such as the Google Chromebook laptops issued by the school.

"Kids are on Chromebooks now and they would be seeing that information as well," she said.

Elmer said school has changed a lot since the attacks, although she wasn't sure how many of the changes are directly related to 9/11. She said some of the changes are because of how things are today.

"We used to just have fire drills and, now, we have lockdowns and we have reverse evacuation drills and we have precautionary procedures for people entering the building, where, in the past you would just walk into the building," she said.

Gombos said that, each year, teachers have some kind of lesson planned for Patriot Day, the U.S. holiday declared by former President George W. Bush to honor those who died on 9/11 and traditionally observed through volunteer service activities.

She also said that, during the Alcona football game on Friday, the school will honor veterans who graduated from the district.