Tragedy, Discovery and Memory

Alexandra Anderson and Martha Anglehart

Big Blog Post #1

The most fascinating thing about history is that everyone in the world is constantly writing it based on the time period, age, gender, class and race. There are large historical moments that everyone remembers and small historical moments that only we remember. We found that our age difference has really shaped the way we view the world, and the way we view the world matters when it comes to our memories of history.

We decided to both recall our memories from 9/11/2001 because it was the biggest historical event to happen in our lifetime so far, and our memories from finding our passion for fitness because it allowed us to bridge the gap between us.

I was 15 sitting in 9^th grade computer keyboarding class when another teacher who was my basketball coach ran in and turned the TV on in our classroom. We didn’t have any idea why he came in until he said “A plane flew into the World Trade Center in New York City.” At 15, I didn’t know what the WTC was, so they gave us a very brief explanation about what it was.

I remember after we realized what was going on, everyone crowding closer to the front and staring at the TV as we watched a 2^nd plane hit and then both buildings crumbling to the ground and watching people running for their lives in a cloud of derbies. It was like a movie, I remember what it looked like, seeing those two buildings collapsing, like it was yesterday. Everyone was horrified and in disbelief. My teacher tried to turn the TV off after that so we didn’t have to get more upset and I fought her on it.

I remember saying, “This is the biggest and scariest event to even happen and you are going to turn it off? If you turn that off I will leave class and go to a room where I am allowed to watch and I’m sure many others will as well.” I’ve always been outspoken but never disrespectful like that, I just felt so strongly that I couldn’t help myself.

Even though I wanted to know what was happening, I did not know what to feel. There was a range of emotions; fear, anger, shock, nausea and sadness. I didn’t have any family or friends in New York at the time but I felt as if what was happening was happening to people I cared about. It felt like a movie that you had to remind yourself was actually happening to people.

Needless to say, our teacher left the TV on but her and I were on thin ice for the rest of the semester. I also got in trouble from my basketball coach because he said I shouldn’t have told her off like that. I just didn’t want to be left in the dark, especially since they were calling it a terrorist attack, because we all knew it was going to change the world we all known to be safe.

The rest of the day, no one taught, no one learned, we all just watched the TV and talked about what was unfolding before our eyes. I went home that day and my parents talked to me about the events and helped keep me informed of what was going on by showing me articles or TV footage and answering my questions.

The events from 9/11 shaped me in so many ways. I had always felt patriotic growing up having so many family members serve in the military but the horrific damage that was done that day, the war that ensued, all the friends I had join the military – it all changed me. It changed how I felt about life being a precious gift, how I respected and feared for my friends in the military, how I felt about our nation, and eventually it all lead to me marrying a Marine and supporting him and his Marines while they still fought a war that started all those years ago when I sat in 9^th grade computer keyboarding.

Alexandra and her husband at the Marine Corps Ball in 2010

I was in first grade. I remember sitting at my desk, ready to learn about addition, listening to my classmates argue about something silly that happened on the playground yesterday. My teacher was just about to begin the lesson when another teacher rushed into the classroom and pulled my teacher aside. Following a few minutes of talking quietly to each other, my teacher came back to our classroom to start our lesson. It didn’t take any longer than a few minutes, nor did it take anyone smarter than a first grader to realize that something had happened.

           

            Our teacher tried to begin the lesson, but seemed extremely frazzled. She was nervous about something, and every student in the normally very friendly, open classroom knew that something was wrong. Mrs. Montee asked us what 2+9 was, and someone hesitantly raised their hand, and replied that it was 11. Nobody knew what was going on, we were convinced that something bad had happened in the school, as sometimes happened. Maybe the naughty kid had been suspended, maybe a teacher had been fired, whatever it was, and it was something that wasn’t appropriate to share with a first grade class.

            School finally ended for the day. After arriving home, both of my parents were home, which was unusual because they were both teachers and never usually got home until an hour after me. I walked into my house, and both of my parents were staring at the TV with their mouths open, astounded by something on the typically boring TV. It was odd to see my parents so intrigued in the news, they generally just had the news on in the background, just to keep up to date on any happenings in the world.

            Once my parents had realized that I had come home, they came to me, and gave me an extraordinarily large hug, and were very happy to see me. I was confused as to why everyone was acting so strange. What had happened? My parents sat me down, and began explaining everyone’s strange behavior. They told me that a plane had hit the Twin Towers in New York City. I just nodded my head, despite me not knowing where New York City was, or what the Twin Towers were. They told me that it was a national disaster, and that there were many people that were hurt from this happening.

            I didn’t know what to feel, I didn’t know anyone that was affected by this, and I hardly understood what had happened. The events from 9/11 had no particular effect on my life, even to this day. It is a very important part of America’s history, but to me, that is what I know it as. I am a patriotic person, but this happening didn’t make me anymore patriotic. I recite our pledge when it is said in school, I sing our national anthem when it is being sung, but I don’t express much pride aside from that.

            The events of 9/11 were devastating to many people throughout this country, and I believe that it is not an event that should ever be forgotten or left untaught. 9/11 has shaped who America is as a country, and should never be overlooked or disregarded.

Breaking News from the World Trade Center Attack

Even thought we both experienced the 9/11 attacks differently, we didn’t just want to talk about that, because we found that we are both positive people and need to end things on a good note. We found that when we were both in 10^th grade (8 years apart) we each found our passion for fitness that has also shaped who we are and is the thing that can span our age gap and allow us to be friends.

Flash forward some 9 years, I was a sophomore in high school, slugging through life trying to ‘find’ who I was as a person. I was stuck in a life that I wasn’t exactly happy with. I decided after going to the doctor, and her telling me that I was considered obese, and that I need to loose weight in order to lead a healthy life. I always knew that I was overweight, and that I ate really unhealthy, but hearing it from someone other than the guilty conscious in my head was shocking. What was I doing so wrong? Why didn’t anyone else ever tell me this?

           

            It was that next day that I signed up for a half marathon. Upon signing up, I convinced my dad to run with me. He had previously run many half marathons, but it had been a couple of years since his last. He agreed to start to train with me, and we decided to start January 1^st. On that day, I went on my first ‘run’, which ended with me walking the majority of it, and breathing very heavily throughout. I remembering thinking to myself, “Martha, what are you doing, you can’t do this, you can’t even run one mile, you have to run 13 times that.” It wasn’t until after the first couple of weeks that I realized that I could do this. I began running longer and longer, and it seemed to always be getting easier and easier. I began eating much healthier, and started learning how to live a healthy lifestyle.

            I remember my first six mile run, upon finishing, I called my dad, and said “Dad, I just ran 6 miles,” he replied back “Good, once you can run 6, you can run 13.” This seemed a little fictitious at the time, but just a couple months later, I finished my first half marathon. In a matter of months, I went from being an overweight, unhappy sophomore in high school, to a much more fit, happy person.

            Fitness to this day is something that plays an extremely large role in my life. Not a day goes by that I am not at the gym working hard, releasing my stress, bettering my physique, and bettering who I am as a person. I have devoted myself to living an extremely healthy lifestyle, being a vegetarian, and promising myself that I will never gain that weight back. I think that that this change has helped me become a much happier, positive person, and I am now happy with who I am.

Martha and her dad at her first race ever!

Finishing my 1st 1/2 marathon in 2011

For me, finding my passion for fitness happened a little differently, but just as life changing and harsh. When I was in 10^th grade, a year after 9/11/2001, I tore my ACL and meniscus. To me, at this point in my life, it felt as if something as horrible as 9/11 was happening to me. Athletics were everything to me; I had been playing volleyball, basketball and softball for as long as I could remember. Tearing my ACL and meniscus changed me once again. It changed how I viewed health and fitness and treating myself with respect. I quit all the team sports I was involved with and started to focus on weightlifting and good nutrition. I didn’t know how to workout without a coach, I didn’t know how to challenge myself without a team and I didn’t know if I would ever feel like myself again.

My injury ended up being the best thing to happen to me, it allowed me to find myself and learn what I was passionate about. It changed me so much that fitness and nutrition became my life. When my husband was in the Marine Corps, we helped train other Marines to be physically and nutritionally fit, I helped wives learn how to cook healthy meals for their families, my husband and I started a personal training business, we started a network marketing business with a health and wellness company that allows us to help others be healthy and change their financial futures and I found the sport of bodybuilding. Fitness made the negativity in the world feel not so hard to handle and gave me the ability to help change people’s lives.

Alexandra and her husband running boot camp workouts

Working on hitting the stage in 2014!

The same year of my injury, I had to write a story in English class about what it felt like to have surgery. I just recently threw out the story because it brought me back to a place of hurt and sadness that I have worked hard to put behind me – like Vladek did with Anja’s diaries. The details I put into that story are unmatched to how I remember it all now. When I think back to 9/11/2001 or that injury, my memories are different to when I was in the moment or remembering back to it only a few years after it happened.

Your memories and the way you write history changes as the years pass and you are called to remember what it felt like, smells like and how it actually was. I can understand why Vladek’s stories may have felt like he was making it up or couldn’t remember what were his actual experiences or someone’s story to him because even though the Holocaust was such an enormous event in his life that literally changed him forever, his memories are just that, memories – and memories are the very things that even the ‘great men’ that Hegel speaks of write history based upon.

It seems almost surreal that two people can have such different personalities, and even differ in age by a large amount, but yet have something in common. We are completely different people, and if we met anywhere other than the rec, we may not bond because our interests aren’t exactly similar. However, we have now met each other, learned about who we are, and could now sit in Starbucks for a few hours and discuss nutrition and weight lifting exercises. Two different people, two different personalities, two different lives, yet both sitting in CSCL 1001, just trying to figure out how to write big blog post number one.