I remember coming into my 1st period History class Mr. Minter and seeing him and the math teacher next to his class talking about something. I brushed it off figuring they were just talking about something teachers talk about and went back to working on the homework I 'forgot' to finish the night before.
Little did I know that he didn't even care about the homework.
When the bell rang things were odd. We could all tell something was wrong. The main clue was that the tv was still on. Mr. Minter never let us turn on the tv unless Channel One was on. Our Principal came over the intercom saying something like "Teachers please continue with your lessons and keep the televisions off." A lot of us were seriously confused. But Mr. Minter laughed and shook his head. I will never forget what he said.
"There is no way in HELL I'm turning this off. In twenty years when you have kids that are going through their history classes they're going to come up to you and ask you where you were and what you were doing when this happened. I want you guys to be able to tell them that you may not have been there, but you watched and you listened because this is going to be a significant day in the history of United States and you knew that when this happened you were going to need to tell the story."
Mr. Minter was a vet in the army (i think). As was the teacher that was next to him. Thankfully I had both of them for class that day.
That morning not once did he turn off the tv. And when the second tower was hit, we all offically knew what was going on. We knew that things were going to be different. When the bell rang from his class, Mr. Minter told us that he would be watching it all day, if one of our teachers didn't let us watch it to be sure to swing by his class on a hall pass or between classes and he would let us know what was going on.
In my next class the teacher wouldn't let us watch anything. Even though a lot of the kids kept trying to turn on the tv, she refused. So I did as Mr. Minter said. I took the hall pass and went to his class where he was still watching the news. And I saw that half of my class was in there too. I ended up staying in there with the hall pass for almost the whole class period (ended up getting a detention slip for it too, though they never collected). Every class period that the teachers wouldn't let us watch I would take the hall pass and go to Minters room. and every period he'd have more kids in that class room.
I will never be able to thank him enough for knowing that we were old enough to know what was going on and that we needed to remember this day.
Everyone needs to remember this day. On the 9th anniversary, it is still truly a day of remembrance.
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