Marco Charter Middle School: Never Forget

Each year, Marco Island Charter Middle School (MICMS) history teacher Tim Tudor organizes a program to teach his students about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, now remembered as 9/11, when four commercial airliners were hijacked, and two of them flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Tudor was a student himself on that tragic day.

"I was at Lely High School as a freshman when this happened,” Tudor said immediately after the Wednesday, September 10 program, held at MICMS. "I was in critical thinking class. Then I went to my law studies class afterwards and we watched on TV everything as it happened. I saw the first tower collapse on TV. I saw the second one get hit live on TV, and it's just always stuck in my mind. And then, being a history teacher and teaching about it, it's really important because we're now at the point that it's been about ten years since any of our middle school kids were even born. This is their Pearl Harbor.”

Like December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor, an American naval base in Hawaii, was the victim of a surprise attack by Japanese forces, September 11, 2001, will live in infamy.

MICMS principal Margo Heidenreich is proud of Tudor for doing his part to make sure today’s youth know about the solemn events of 9/11.

"I just think Tim did a really good job of organizing an event that will be memorable for the kids,” Heidenreich said. “He had firsthand eyewitnesses there to speak to 9/11 and to speak to that day. And then to organize this through the PTO and the students and the parents, it's beautiful. It's just such a great day.”

Ray Leshinger and John Wallace, current officers with the Marco Island Police Department, spoke to the students about their experiences as members of the New York City Police Department.

Wallace, a 38-year NYPD veteran, shared his initial response to the attacks.

“On the morning of September 11, I was home,” Wallace said. "I worked late the night before, and my wife woke me up. She said, ‘You better turn on the TV. Something is going on. Probably something you're going to be interested in.' So I turn it on and they hit one of the towers. So at that time, I'm thinking to myself, it's probably a small plane, a Cessna pilot error. But of course, I'm going to work. So as I'm changing, I haven’t left the house yet and the second plane hit the second tower. At that point, I realize that it's not just a pilot error. This is an attack on the country. This is terrorism. So I drove into work on the Long Island Expressway. And at one point it has a crescent that goes up. And at that point, you can see the entire island of Manhattan just before you get into it. And I could see the two towers and the smoke pouring out of both of them.

"As I'm watching this, I have the radio on and the reporter on the radio starts screaming. He totally lost it. He's screaming, ‘it's coming down, it's coming down. The building is collapsing.' It's like surreal. I watch and the building collapses. All you see is this huge plume of smoke that will cover that whole lower area. I knew that area very well. And I assumed that the building fell. And at that point, I thought it was probably up to tens of thousands of people, because on a normal day in Manhattan, the population goes up to about three-four million people. Manhattan is basically the same size as Marco. Could you imagine three or four million people on Marco? That's the population of Manhattan every weekday, Monday through Friday. So I drove into work, changed, and went down to where the site was. When I got down there, the debris field was three to four stories high. I couldn't tell you how big it was, but my best estimate would be to take this school campus, double it in size, and think of three to four stories of debris covering the entire area.”

Wallace then attempted to describe the indescribable.

“When I got there,” Wallace said, “we were trying to come up with some ideas on what to do. It's bedlam. It's absolute chaos. We've never dealt with anything like this before. The only good thing about when things like this occur, afterwards, you do after-action plans, and you plan for future events. This one, we had no planning for. The first thing we decided is we need to put officers in high target locations. So we put officers up at the (headquarters of the) United Nations. We put them at the hotels. We put them at Grand Central Station. Anywhere we thought there could be a possible attack. We closed all the bridges. We closed all the tunnels because we didn't want anybody coming into the island and causing more havoc."

Leshinger, a 29-year NYPD veteran, was a detective on Staten Island and was part of the relief efforts getting people evacuated from Staten Island. Afterwards, he participated in the search and recovery mission. Debris from the Ground Zero site was brought to the Staten Island landfill, which had been closed but was reopened and became the world's biggest crime scene. For about nine months after the attack, recovery workers were sifting through the debris, looking for wallets, identification, any kind of evidence they could find to help give loved ones peace of mind about what happened.

“There are people who were never recovered,” Leshinger said. “They never got anything back.”

Leshinger’s story sparked a memory for Wallace.

"I had a sergeant who worked for me,” Wallace said, "and that day she was in the office. Her brother worked in the emergency service unit, and she couldn't locate him. She called me and I was down at the site and she said, ‘My brother, I can't get a hold of my brother.' I told her somebody down there said he was one of the first emergency service vehicles that responded to the scene. She said to me, 'I want to come down.' I said, ‘Don't come down here. This place is a disaster.' She insisted. She came down, and we made a feeble attempt to try to find her brother, which would have been like finding a needle in a haystack. Months later, they found his gun and it was all bent. Apparently, he got in. He was in the building and his gun was all mangled. I guess it had been exposed to the flames and was all bent. That's the only thing that was ever recovered from it.”

Leshinger then brought things up to current times by sharing facts about the Freedom Tower, now officially known as One World Trade Center, that was built as a symbol of resilience, remembrance, and hope.

“The Freedom Tower opened in 2014,” Leshinger told the students. "And it cost $3.9 billion to build. It’s 1776’ tall. What happened in 1776? Does anybody know?”

After a brief silence one student said, “The Declaration of Independence was signed.”

“See how they did it,” Leshinger said. “That’s pretty cool, right? The Freedom Tower is 1776’ tall. A little history lesson.”