NMH Community Reflects on 9/11

By Kunmi Ajayi '28

Twenty-five years after Sept. 11, 2001, most current Northfield Mount Hermon students have no memory of the attacks. On Sept. 11, 2026, history and social science teacher Katie Hunt hosted a teach-in that explored the day through four stations: background and description of events, domestic consequences, international response, and personal remembrance and reflection. The event, held in Schauffler Memorial Library, was designed to help this generation with no memory of the attacks understand how they still shape the world today.

The background and international response traced the roots of the Sept. 11 attacks back further than most students expected, from the 1979 capture of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the financial and political connections between the Bin Laden family and the Saudi royal family. At the background information station, La’Mon Perry, a faculty member in the History and Social Science Department, talked about the warnings that the U.S. intelligence agencies had before the attacks but failed to connect in time.

At the personal remembrance station, the day was brought to life by the people who lived it. Peter Weis ’78, who was in his third year as archivist at NMH, described finishing a presentation on the school’s history and driving to an eerily empty library, only to find all the librarians and students crowded around two televisions in the circulation office, watching the second tower burn. He recalled being unable to eat for weeks afterward. His fear did not fade away quickly, either; months later, while driving home from a night shift, he noticed an ordinary oil delivery truck and immediately suspected the worst. “My mind just always went to the worst-case scenario,” he told students.

Gina Carballo, senior associate director of admission at NMH, was a college freshman in 2001. She described a world in which information moved differently from the way it does for today’s students. “There was no Twitter. There wasn’t even Facebook,” she said, remembering how she and her dormmates gathered into their hall’s only TV lounge, afraid to leave in case something happened. Without a phone in her pocket, she said, there was no way to simply check what was going on. For years afterward, she added, she studied other passengers before she boarded every flight, “trying to think, are you somebody that would want to hurt someone?” – a habit that she says reflects how profound the anxiety post-9/11 was. 

Assistant Head of School for Campus Life Grant Gonzalez, who was a junior at Salisbury School in 2001, remembered his school in the middle of taking its 100th-anniversary photo when word of the attacks began to spread. With cell service and landlines down, students gathered in their dean’s house to watch the news together. He recalls everyone attempting to figure out what was happening as they watched. For the students listening to him at NMH, the story gave a sense of what Sept. 11 looked like from inside a school.

The domestic consequences station focused on how the attacks affected everyday American life. Air travel permanently changed with the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), as history teacher Tim Relyea recalled from before 9/11: “I literally remember coming back from my study-abroad trip with a machete in my suitcase,” he said. This detail drew laughs from many people in the room but highlighted how relaxed airport security once was. New government surveillance capabilities raised long-term questions about the balance of security and civil liberties, a debate that speakers noted is still ongoing today.

Kunmi Ajayi a junior at NMH and a workjob student reporter in the communications office.
Photo by Katie Hunt