On Sept. 11, 2001, Greg Buckman was a junior sitting in his high school chemistry class.
All of a sudden, he and his friends turned on the TV. They watched as the second plane crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
"We were watching it and a little confused," he said. "How do you fly into the twin towers? How do you not see that? Me and probably 5 of my friends stayed in the same spot for 4 hours. We didn't move, everything like kind of stopped."
Fast-forward fifteen years and a lot has changed.
SHARE YOUR STORY: What were you doing when the World Trade Center was attacked?
Buckman is no longer a student in class. He's now the teacher, teaching juniors at Rockhurst High School about the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I think it's important to constantly look at that event. It's one of the events, like I was telling the students, that really changed America," he said.
Many of the juniors in his class were 1 or 2 years old at the time of the attack. They were too young to remember.
"I was 2 years old at the time, so I really have no memory of what happened," said Max Dunmier, a junior at Rockhurst High.
Dunmier said he learned about the terrorism attacks through his parents’ stories, newspaper clippings and history classes.
This is the very first time a high school freshman class was not alive during the attacks.
"My experience has been a lot different growing up than Mr. Buckman before 9/11," said James Atwater, another junior in Buckman's history class. "I grew up having to take my shoes off at the airport, putting all the stuff in my pockets in the buckets and taking my belt off at the airport and you know... just taking all of those precautions."
Memorial Services
A Sept. 11 memorial service is scheduled to take place Sunday, Sept. 11 at 7:30 a.m., at the Overland Park 9/11 memorial.
For more information, visit: http://www.opkansas.org/events/28403/
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Ariel Rothfield can be reached at Ariel.Rothfield@KSHB.com.
