A Personal Reflection on 9/11

September 11, 2001, was not just any day for Hardin-Simmons University. It was a day filled with scheduled events as the campus ramped up to celebrate the inauguration of HSU’s 14th president.It was an unscheduled event that day, however, that would change the lives of everyone gathered at the inauguration and the lives of all Americans, no matter where they were. {{more}}Dr. Craig Turner, who had served as HSU’s vice president for academic affairs, was scheduled to be inaugurated as HSU’s president during a combined convocation and inauguration event. However, just before the processional of faculty into Behrens Auditorium, the tragic news was delivered of the terrorist attacks unraveling on America’s east coast.Two commercial airliners had plunged into the World Trade Center, another flight had crash landed in a field in rural Pennsylvania, and another plane had ripped into the Pentagon, the very place one faculty member’s brother was working.The event would turn a happy day somber and would forever stamp the date 9/11 as the name of the worst one-day event in American history. As Dr. Craig Turner, a former literature professor, would later say, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”Ten years after that momentous day, the campus marked 9/11 with a remembrance ceremony for the victims and for the families of those killed. HSU students, faculty, and staff filled Logsdon Chapel as candles were lit in remembrance by Abilene police and firefighters, and by HSU family members who have served in the armed forces.Some of the most compelling words came from HSU’s dean of the Holland School of Sciences and Mathematics, Dr. Chris McNair, as he reflected on how the national tragedy affected him personally. McNair’s brother Phillip was at work in the Pentagon in the very section where the plane crashed through the walls.HSU students attend 9-11 memorial service