Community Corner

Remembering Sept. 11, 2001 Twelve Years On

Where were you on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001? Have your views and world changed since?

Twelve years ago Wednesday, the nation and the world stood still in the face of a shocking and unexpected tragedy — the terrorist attacks that took down the World Trade Center towers, resulted in two more planes crashing into the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania and the death of almost 3,000 citizens.


The minutes and hours of Sept. 11, 2001 are indelibly etched in many of our memories, young and old, and as we stop to reflect on the years that have passed since that world-altering event, the day itself seems a good place to start.
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Sept. 11 remembrance ceremony Wednesday night at 6 p.m. in front of Town Hall. Add your photos, videos and stories here on our open blog.
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I myself was in a study hall period in high school when the principal came over the loudspeaker to inform the school that a plane had flown into one of the towers (later identified as the North Tower).

A student from the class was going back and forth from the library — which had a television — relaying details as they emerged and even sketching diagrams on the blackboard of the scenes being broadcast.

There was no more traditional learning that day. Classes were spent openly expressing our fears, our confusion and our thoughts about why and how this could happen.

Brookfield residents who were in the World Trade Center or just blocks away in New York remember that day vividly and the memory of those lost still lingers.

Where were you on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001? How have your views and your world changed since?

Remembering Those Lost


Brookfield resident Judith Hofmiller, 53 in 2001, worked as a senior software consultant for risk management firm Marsh and McLennan near the top of the North Tower. She was in the office when the first plane struck just before 8:46 a.m.

Brookfield High School graduate Christopher Orgielewicz, then 35, lived in Larchmont, NY, with his wife and three children, working as a research analyst on 102nd floor of the South Tower. He was working eight floors from the top when the second plane crashed between the 77th and 85th floors at 9:03 a.m.


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