We all remember where we were when we found out about the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
That morning, students of a Sarasota school had a front-row seat, watching the commander-in-chief digest the news.
Now grown adults, there were two young men -- both elementary students in the audience at the time -- when then President George W. Bush addressed the nation from their school, Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota. Both recall the day beginning as a very exciting morning, knowing they were about to meet the president -- who was coming to applaud the children and their teachers for their high reading scores.
In an instant, everything changed.
LaDamian Smith was one of the students reading along to the president. He was in the second row, when suddenly:
“His face kind of got red,” Smith recalled. “You could see something had happened that, you know, wasn’t normal.”
Moments later, the commander-in-chief stepped out of the classroom. After being briefed on the attack in New York City, President Bush addressed the nation from the school’s media center.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America,” Bush said. “Today, we’ve had a national tragedy.”
Smith remembers the emotions of the day. Excitement dissolving into confusion.
“You could see the towers, or the plane crashing into the towers, you know, being a child, it’s basically like looking at a movie,” he said.
But it was all too real.
Stevenson Tose-Rigell was a fifth grader at the time.
“When he came in and said the nation is, you know, under attack. The plane hit the World Trade Center. Obviously, I don’t know what the World Trade Center is,” Tose-Rigell recalled. “I’m from Florida all my life.”
Tose-Rigell had the honor of standing right behind the president for what was supposed to be a presentation on a national reading initiative. He was also the son of the school’s principal.
Tose-Rigell didn’t quite grasp the news coming from the president. But he knew it was bad.
“The cameras that were lined up across the back room -- like flashes,” he said. “It just kind of started going off. The seriousness and the intensity of the moment just definitely swept up into the room at that time.”
Tose-Rigell said having that front-row seat on the horror of 9/11 at such a young age changed his perspective on the world.
“Everybody’s innocent at a younger age until, you know, that veil gets lifted and you see the reality of what really goes on,” Stevenson said. “I think it’s been, for me personally, a big struggle trying to, you know, cope with how life really is in what we call the real world.”
From homeland security, to airports, to moving about our nation -- and the world -- things have become more complicated in the years since 9/11. Even risky.
Now age 30, Tose-Rigell says in the past 20 years that he’s been disillusioned by the way the world treats his friends.
“Being biracial and having friends who are different cultures, Indian, Jewish, Muslim. I mean, it’s crazy seeing how people been, you know, treated and ostracized based on who they are as a person,” he said.
When he was 17, his mom passed away. The head of his school -- Gwen Tose-Rigell -- became known for hosting the president on Sept. 11, 2001, as “the 9/11 principal.”
Her son felt he needed to share her message on the day by publishing her memoir.
“It was kind of like my gift from her to the rest of the world -- and people that knew her and loved her,” he said.
Stevenson Tose-Rigell said he recently lost another important woman in his life -- his grandmother, who he was very close with. But he’s proud to be able to continue to tell his mother’s story.
Smith is now a father of two and a soldier in the U.S. Army.
Both say they’ll never forget what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, and the countless number of people who lost a loved one and continue to struggle through the pain.