NASH CO., N.C. — Many of us can remember where we were on Sept. 11, 2001, and who we were with.  

For some of us, it was our schoolmates. But how do you explain the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil to people who weren’t alive? 

For one community, that answer requires two Nash County school teachers who were once students in the same school system.

Charles Vester is a 7th grade Social Studies teacher at Southern Nash Middle School.

He said teaching young people can be exciting. Modern classrooms are full of laptops instead of more traditional textbooks. Vester starts his class with a few prompts to get his 12- and 13-year-olds thinking about the world outside of where they live.

“How does where you live affect how you live?” Vester asked the class.

Vester believes it is much harder to educate without encouraging some imagination.

“A lot of them haven’t traveled outside of Nash County or North Carolina. Trying to make them think or using personal experiences helps with that,” he said.

The 36-year-old said one personal experience from his more formative years stick out: Sept. 11, 2001.

“You started realizing the Twin Towers in New York had been attacked,” Vester said. “I think 9/11 was a shared experience.”

Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center that morning. Vester remembers seeing the terror unfold before his eyes on the television at school during his ROTC period.

“Then I swear I recall, on live TV, seeing the second one being hit. We all kind of were like, ‘What just happened? What is going on?’” he said.

The country would never be the same.

“I think it’s the way we get information now compared to how we did 22 years ago. We got information by turning the TV on,” he said.

Vester flipped through a school yearbook from that time. 

“It’s kind of nostalgic. It brings back a lot of memories,” Vester said. “It’s interesting to go back and look at it. Read it now and reflect back on it. It’s kind of hard to say. I think you kind of look at it from a different perspective than when you were 14 or 15 years old. I think it kind of does re-jog our memory. Brings back those feelings.”

It’s a surreal moment in history, Vester shares, with fellow Social Studies teacher and former classmate Matthew Bissette.

Bissette said students are curious about what happened and what it was like living through Sept. 11.

“Typically the week of, the day before, the day after, the day of, they’ll ask more questions about the day but more about what we were doing because they know we were around for it just like their parents,” Bissette said.

At a time before information was at your fingertips, magazine covers and newspaper clippings seemed like relics of history.

“You just didn’t know where it was going to end. Feeling all through the rest of your day like, ‘Is it over? Is there more? Are we going to be attacked here?’” Vester said.

Some of their classmates wrote about 9/11 in the yearbook. Vester believes it was important to preserve those thoughts, feelings and memories. It’s one-way middle schoolers can access the past in the present.

Vester read a poem aloud from one of his former classmates.

“They can bomb our buildings, crash our planes, hurt our people, treat us badly. We will still survive. They can wreck our homes. Try us and you’ll see. We’ll forever remain the U.S. of A.: the few, the proud, the free,” he read aloud.