It has been 16 years now since one of the most tragic terrorist attacks in America happened on Sept. 11, 2001. Most of the students that attend Pattonville High School were not born yet, but the teachers on the other hand lived through it and are able to recall what they were doing during the attack.

Science department chair Mr. Rob Lamb said he was at college on that Tuesday morning when four planes were hijacked and used to attack America.

“That morning, I was in college already, I was a junior. My roommate woke me up to tell me something just hit the World Trade Center towers, and I walked out and sat there for the next two hours staring at the TV and watched the second tower get hit, and the second tower go down,” Lamb said.

He also learned about the attacks in Washington, D.C.

“We also heard at that point the Pentagon got hit,” he said. “There was a little bit about something happening in Pennsylvania, but we didn’t hear much about that yet.”

At that time, he decided to stop watching the TV and go to class.

“I went to class because they hadn’t canceled class yet. When I went to my class, the professor walked in, said two words, started crying, and ran out the door. That was the end of my class for the day,” he said. “Yea, that is one of the two things in my life that I remember more than almost anything else.”

Ms. Kaitlin Childs grew up in Oregon, and because of the time difference in New York, she was not at school yet.

“I was in fourth grade, but I was on the west coast so I was asleep at the time because the planes hit around 6 a.m. Pacific time,” she said. “I remember walking to school with my neighbor who has a lot of family in New York and she was telling me about what had happened.”

She has a lot of emotions going through her and she didn’t understand what was happening.

“I was confused, and sad, and scared,” she said. “That night, I slept in my parents’ room because I was afraid someone would crash a plane into our house early the next morning.”