Twelve years ago today, 2,996 people were killed in an attack by radical Islamist terror group Al- Qaeda. Two planes were crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center, destroying both, another crashed into the west side of the Pentagon, and a fourth plane, which was heading towards Washington, DC was able to be overtaken by the passengers on the flight, and crashed into a small field in Pennsylvania.

With AHS’ close proximity to the Pentagon and Washington, DC, in previous years many students have had multiple stories of their parents coming home early, and their memories of this day. But this year is different. Many students at AHS do not remember the day at all.

Freshman Matthew Vogus has no memory of the day.

“I don’t remember anything about September 11th. I was only two years old.” Vogus said.

Many of the freshman were only one or two years old when the attacks happened. None of them would have been old enough to remember what happened that day. It is a hard concept for many upperclassmen to understand; they are one of the few students left in the school with memories of September 11, 2001.

“It is so weird knowing that my class is one of the last ones to remember 9/11,” senior Jackson Trollinger said, “I vividly remember the private school I was at took us to the catacombs of the church and we stayed there for a couple of hours.”

But for the students who do remember this day, it is hard to forget what happened that day.

“It was my dad’s birthday, and he was working in DC. We kept calling him [and could not reach him] we didn’t know if he was going to come home,” junior Aviad Gebrehiwot said.

Every September 11th, we as a nation pause to remember the fallen, the heroes, and the citizens who perished and risked their life to save another person. But with each passing school year, the students become younger, and many are not old enough to remember what happened anymore.