Beckley, WV (WOAY) – It is said that everyone remembers where they were on Sept. 11, 2001. But now there is an entire generation of students and young adults who cannot say the same.
Troy Miller teaches social studies at Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley. On the morning of the attacks, he was a teacher then, watching it all unfold.
“I tell my students that when big, major events happen in history or your life, you always remember where you were. I was at Culpeper Junior High School in Virginia that day, and a librarian came into the auditorium where I was that said a plane flew into the World Trade Center,” Miller said. “I thought, this is a biplane, you know. So, it comes back that there’s another plane flew into it, that’s when I knew something was not right.”
Twenty-five years later, Miller said a big challenge is getting students to feel and understand something that was history before they were born.
“It is strange, you know, because you know, you’re emotional about it, I’m emotional about it, people around my age and any way associated with it was emotional about it. And trying to bring that out with them is a difficult thing because, like I said, they didn’t live through it. You got to bring that to life with them,” he said.
Miller said he tries to drive home that emotional aspect of the day with real stories of victims, to make something that seems so long ago feel more real.
“What I try to do is bring out others’ personal stories. And they sit and listen to these stories about how, you know, ‘my dad went to work, never came home’ and those kind of things. I think that kind of brings it home to them because, what would happen if my dad went to work and never came home?” he said.
Miller said Sept. 11 is unique, in that it happened not in some distant land, but right here at home.
“You hear about wars in Europe, Vietnam, it’s always somewhere else. Even the terrorist attacks always happened somewhere else. But now it happened here. And so that makes the world become a much smaller place,” he said.
Miller said he hopes others honor the nation’s shared commitment that comes with that fateful day.
“I’m hoping that that’s still a thing people will talk on 9/11 with their families. So it kind of continues on. And people always remember and not forget,” he said.
