World Trade Center

Boonsboro High School graduate Kevin Hurlbrink was training at Fort Gordon, Ga., when hijacked jetliners tore into the Pentagon and World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. His battalion commander told his unit that America was under attack. At first, they believed the announcement was some kind of "crazy training. " "Initially, we had thought he was joking or blindsiding us with some kind of crazy training," Hurlbrink recently wrote in an email. "He went on to explain that two planes had struck the towers of the World Trade Center.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks showed our vulnerability as a nation and thrust religious questions into headlines and dinner-table conversations that had given very few Americans pause prior to that day, according to Don Stevenson, a retired pastor of Christ's Reformed Church in Hagerstown. "When we were bombed, it brought America to its knees," said Stevenson, who is adjunct professor of philosophy, ethics and religion at Hagerstown Community College. "We as a nation, we were kicked in the stomach, so to speak; we were at ground zero in our psyche.

Kaplan University in Hagerstown now has something that school President W. Christopher Motz said was conspicuously absent 10 years ago - a flagpole with the Stars and Stripes flying. The campus Wednesday held a ceremony that acknowledged the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and remembered victims and heroes of that day, including first responders. The flagpole was dedicated in memory of Lance Cpl. Steven Szwydek of Fulton County, Pa., a U.S. Marine killed while serving in Iraq in 2005.

Gordon and Rosie McLucas met in April 1946 at a Waynesboro, Pa., skating rink. Gordon - who goes by his middle name, rather than his first name, William - went there with a friend. Rosie also went with a friend. Gordon married Rosie. Their friends from that night also got married. The McLucases are about to hit a milestone in their marriage: Their 65th anniversary is on Sept. 11. Rosie's 86th birthday is on the same day. The anniversary and birthday were noted on the front page of The Daily Mail on Sept.

When hijacked planes tore into the heart of America 10 years ago, life changed. Fear, war, terror alerts and increased airport security became part of the daily lexicon. The immediate shift in daily life is shown in the pages of The Daily Mail, the afternoon newspaper - since merged into The Herald-Mail - that gave some Hagerstown residents their first printed account of the terrorist attacks. The front page of the Sept. 11, 2001, edition screamed "Terror hits U.S. " and showed a picture of flames after a second plane hit the twin towers.

Ken Snyder is more cautious around crowds and is prone to a “defensive posture.” Retired minister Torben Aarsand has noticed that “fear is just under the surface of our minds,” and it makes itself known in unrelated events - such as the recent earthquake. Suzanne Hayes said one of the most remarkable experiences among baby boomers like herself was feeling that they had the world “on a string.” Now, Hayes said, the next generation knows that's not the case for them.

There are a string of images that I never want to see again. I don't know how many times I've seen video of the second plane flying into the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Whatever the final tally, that's enough. I was far from danger that day and glued to a television screen like so many other Americans. Video of the plane's impact and of the towers collapsing seemed to be played on a loop. And now it's seared into my brain. I don't need to be reminded of it. Many Americans share that sentiment.

For several years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Marjorie Kane of Hagerstown wrote on a Post-It note what her husband, Gregory "Greg" Kane, was wearing in the morning before he left for work, down to the color of his socks. She remembers all too well what her mother, Margaret "Marge" Mathers, went through trying to deduce from her husband's closet what he was wearing on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed two airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City. Marge's husband of 39 years, Charles "Chuck" William Mathers, died that day in his office on the 99th floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower.

A piece of the World Trade Center twin towers will be memorialized in Hagerstown this month as a permanent reminder of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The city, together with the Washington County Citizen Corps, local elected officials, law enforcement, fire and rescue services, and members of the  military, will hold Remembrance in the Park, a ceremony at Hagerstown City Park on Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. to pay tribute to our fallen heroes, according to a city news release.

Jonathan Kay, managing editor of Canada's National Post, has made a major contribution to the understanding of the conspiratorial mindset in his recent publication, “Among The Truthers.” By reaching back into the history of well-studied cases of conspiracy theory, Kay brings his insights to bear on the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center that generated a whole new batch of conspiracy theories. To inform readers of the tenacity and longevity of conspiracy theories, Kay gives such reminders as the 1897 fraud known as the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and the 1954 deliberate distortion of a meeting held in a Dutch hotel and dubbed the Bilderberg Group.