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  • Where were you? Otter Creek Middle School social studies teacher Rick Petty discusses the events of 9/11 during his eighth-grade U.S. History class Tuesday at the school. (Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza)

    MET 091112 911 01PETTY.jpg

  • Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza Never forget: A 9/11-themed illustration sits on the desk of Otter Creek Middle School social studies teacher Rick Petty as he discusses the events of 9/11 during his eighth-grade U.S. History class Tuesday at the school.

    MET 091112 911 02PETTY.jpg

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September 12, 2012

On Patriot Day, Otter Creek students find out what it was like when terror hit home

Sue Loughlin The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — Social studies teacher Rick Petty had many stories to share with his students about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but there was one “that just ripped my guts out,” he said.

He spoke on Patriot Day, the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, to an eighth-grade U.S. history class at Otter Creek Middle School.

Among those who died in the 9/11 attacks were three 11-year-olds from Washington, D.C. The children, their teacher-chaperones and National Geographic Society staff members were embarking on an educational trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary in California.

The three academically talented children had been chosen to participate in a research project, and it was the first airplane trip for at least one of the students, Bernard Brown.

The children — Brown, Asia Cottom and Rodney Dickens — never made it; they were among those killed when their hijacked airplane, Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon.

“They were at the top of their lives,” Petty said. But they got on a plane, and an hour later, they had perished.

As a teacher, “that story dramatically affected me,” Petty told the history class.

He went through the 9/11 timeline of events for the class and described his own recollections of that day.

Petty, a teacher at Chauncey Rose Middle School in 2001, remembers that it was a “beautiful Tuesday” outdoors. It also was ISTEP test week.

As news events unfolded, people began to realize the U.S. had suffered a terrorist attack. “All day long, parents were flocking to schools,” Petty said. “They wanted to take their kids home to keep them safe.”

Later that day, he remembers sitting outside with his own son, and for the first time he could recall, there wasn’t a single jet trail in the sky. No one was allowed to fly or they risked being shot down by the military, he told his transfixed students, who were about 3 years old on Sept. 11, 2001.

On Tuesday morning, Petty encouraged his students to go home and talk to their family members about their own recollections of 9/11.

He pointed out that some people may still be dying as the result of 9/11, in particular, emergency responders who ran into burning, smoke-filled World Trade Center buildings and, years later, developed cancer.

The federal government announced Monday that about 50 cancers will be covered by a nearly $3 billion settlement fund set up for victim compensation and signed into law by President Barack Obama last year.

Petty told students that 9/11 was orchestrated by “a group of bad people,” not any particular religion or country. “You shouldn’t have any animosity toward anyone” or show intolerance because of someone’s religion or country, he said.

Principal Tammy Rowshandel, who also sat in the classroom, related her own story. Her husband is from Iran, and the post 9/11 period “was kind of a scary time for us,” she said. “There was a lot of racial profiling.”

Her husband has his own business in town. After 9/11, people would go up to him and say, “So where exactly are YOU from,” Rowshandel recalled.

For a few weeks, her husband kept his business locked from the inside and people would have to knock to get in.

Eighth-grader Alex Davis found Petty’s stories about 9/11 compelling. Events surrounding the terrorist attacks were “a tragedy and sad. … It took everything I had not to cry about it,” he said.

Another student, Summer Cooper, said she’s learned a lot about 9/11 since elementary school. Teachers “want us to learn about it,” she said. What happened 11 years ago is “sad and depressing.”

After listening to Petty and Rowshandel, Cooper said it reminded her that it’s important not to judge people based on their religion or where they are from. Instead, people should be judged “on how they act and what choices they make,”  Cooper said.

Sue Loughlin can be reached at (812) 231-4235 or sue.loughlin@tribstar.com.

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