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• Peace Movements Some residents • Education A year later, area educators • Religion Local religious leaders discuss • Events See a listing of campus, Triangle continue to advocate a nonviolent response. are still debating how to teach about the attacks. religion in a post-Sept 11 world. and national events to be held today. cL PHOTOS COURTESY OF DAVID GRIFFIN David Griffin, pictured below with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (left), traveled from his home in Greensboro to the World Trade Center site in New York, where he was asked to oversee all demolition activities at Ground Zero. Clearing Ground Zero: America Looks to Rebuild GREENSBORO RESIDENT OVERSEES CLEANUP EFFORTS ck yourself up, bmsh yourself off, and all over again.” JL For Greensboro resident David Griffin Jr., this childhood song is reminiscent of how the nation is ready to rebuild a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Griffin - vice president of DH Griffin Wrecking Cos. Inc - was asked by the New York City Department of Design and Construction to be the lead consultant for demolition at the World Trade Center site. As lead consultant, Griffin oversaw and approved all demolition activities associated with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. But he began his service at Ground Zero as a volunteer. “I told my wife I was going to go to New York to see if I could help,” Griffin said. “She said, ‘Well, if you’re going, I’m going with you.’ So I loaded up my wife and three kids on Sept. 13 and headed toward New York City.” Griffin said he had only been to New York once before and did not know anyone in the area. “Nobody asked me to go,” he said. “I just felt the desire, and I felt that we had something that we had to offer.” Griffin, after setding into a hotel, made his way to Ground Zero. What he found when he got there was a swarm of police barricades, rescue workers and volunteers like himself. While Griffin was working on Tower Two, he met up with repre sentatives from Bovis-Lend Lease, a contracting firm in Charlotte working on Tower Two and the Vista International hotel. “We had no training for anything like that. Even professional rescuers aren't prepared for a loss of life of that magnitude. ” David Griffin Greensboro Consultant David Griffin Greensboro Consultant Bovis hired Griffin as its demolition consultant. As Bovis’s consultant, Griffin successfully helped bring down the high curtain wall - the 27-story remnants from Tower Two - on Sept. 25. Soon Griffin’s work became too hard for New York City officials to ignore. Three days later, they approached Griffin, asking him to take on the role of lead demolition consultant, overseeing GENERATION From Front Page 11 in the lives of young adults. But Erica Wise, UNC psychology professor, said the falling towers and the emotions they evoked might have already left a deep impression on col lege-aged individuals - perhaps deeper than that left on any other age group. “Developmentally, college students are coming out of a period where they feel invulnerable,” Wise said. “They are starting to deal with the idea that there are some things they cannot do.” She said that Sept 11, coupled with the sense of vulnerability and mortality that comes with the college years, could great ly influence college-aged individuals. “In a sense, this may be something that hit college-aged kids too early in the process of learning to deal with vul nerability,” Wise said. She said the unsettling questions A HELPING HAND jjßis i-JL ,s# /I all the contractors working at Ground Zero. Griffin, with only two coworkers in tow, was hesitant to accept what was possibly the largest demolition project in the world. “I told him I needed to think about it,” Griffin said. “They told me I had two hours. Potentially one of the biggest opportunities of our company’s career, and we had two hours to decide.” But he took it. “I don’t regret it,” he said. “It was an honor to be there. It was a challenge -a lot of hard work and a lot of long days.” Griffin and his family were uprooted and forced to live out of a hotel for the first 40 days in New York. Eventually, he bought an apartment about 1 1/2 blocks from the World Trade Center site, where he could see the Statue of Liberty from his window. Under Griffin’s supervision, debris from 17 million square feet of office space was removed from the site -a project made more difficult by the search and recovery of the 2,800 victims. “We had no training for anything like that,” he said. “Even professional rescuers aren’t prepared for a loss of life of that magnitude.” Griffin admitted that working at Ground Zero was as emotionally taxing as one would expect. “It was an emotional roller coaster,” he said. raised by Sept. 11 might lead college students to search out answers else where. They might prematurely choose a major or settle down with a partner too soon, Wise said. “When the world seems to be more hostile, people may be looking for some certainty. The events might decrease people’s intoler ance for uncertainty.” Perrin also said that younger genera tions - especially those aware of the enormity of the event - are likely to be more greatly affected by Sept 11 because they have a narrower frame of reference. “Younger people have less habits developed,” he said. “They are coming up with ways to look at the world, not just refreshing old ones. “People who are younger think with what they have, and what they have is September 11.” But Perrin said drastic lifestyle changes will only occur in the outliers of the college-aged generation. “There are trends at the margin,” he The project was physically exhausting, filled with 16-hour work days. Griffin said the site was busy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “We just felt the need to be there and put in a lot more hours than a normal job,” he said. Griffin stayed in New York until March 7, keeping in contact with the DHG workers still in the city until DHG finished the project six months ahead of schedule and $4 million under budget. “At the end of the day, we were proud about what we achieved when we truly worked together as a team - it wasn’t white or black or Hispanic,” he said. Griffin said he could feel the spirit of New York and the United States firsthand while working at Ground Zero. “I think New York came together,” he said. “America will never be the same. What happened at the World Trade Center affected everybody in a different way. But New York felt the brunt of it. I think it humbled the city.” But Griffin is open about his disappointment with the decrease in outward signs of patriotism. “You don’t see the same patriotism you saw the first month or two,” he said. “A lot of people hon estly don’t want to think about it.” Griffin said he does not want the nation to for get what happened and what can happen. “Your life can end at any time, just like those people that died in New York that day who were doing nothing different from what (I was) doing - they were doing their job,” he said. But Griffin says it is time for New York to move ahead with plans to rebuild. “If you don’t, you’re admitting that you’re beaten, and you real ly are beaten,” he said. As the song suggests, he said, “Bmsh yourself off and start all over again.” Once home, Griffin spent time with his family and resumed his role as vice president of DHG, but he will not forget what Sept. 11 taught him. He said, “You appreciate each and every thing - spending that extra five minutes with your fam ily or getting that extra hug before you leave the house in the morning -and just taking time.” By Emma Burgin, Assistant State & National Editor said. “But lots of kids did what they always did.” Perrin said many tendencies exhibit ed by college students as a whole exist ed before Sept. 11. “People that are in college now were already more interested in service, more distrustful of business, more trust ing of government,” he said. “We may have as a culture defined September 11 to make it seem as if it were the root.” Even still, Perrin said Sept. 11 has caused college students to make small but significant changes in their lives. “Little changes happen a lot, and they make a big difference,” Perrin said. And though he hesitated to catego rize, Perrin said those changes will like ly mold the college-aged generation. “Generations definitely determine their identity based on big things that happen when they’re young.” By Elyse Ashbum, State & National Editor CAMPUS From Front Page cussion groups and spontaneous gath erings of students to talk about America’s place in the world,” he said. Shelton said Americans typically look inward and forget to consider other cul tures because so much news is focused on the United States. But since SepL 11, many students have realized that they need to reach out as well. “We have to balance the national tendency to look at America for 98 percent of the time with the fact that the world is shrinking.” Junior Stef Gordon, a psychology major, said that students do not live in fear but that there is an increased sense of unease about travel and security that was not there a year ago. Life for students is different now because the possibility of another ter rorist attack is a reality, she said. Students also see the need to study CAMPUS REACTS TO TRAGEDIES Community displays compassion, openness When 10,000 people gathered at Polk Place on Sept. 12 to observe the memory of those killed in the terrorist attacks, they were not only making UNC history. They were adding anew chapter to it. Whether in congregation or protest, UNC’s responses to national crises have maintained a certain importance on campus for more than six decades. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, then-UNC President Frank Porter Graham held a special convocation the next day at Memorial Hall. Two thousand students and faculty attended. “We should have unity in this country, a unity without tyranny, without compulsion,” Graham said. Graham also stressed for students to “equip them selves in body and mind for any task that may be called upon them to perform for their country.” One student who answered that call was Clarence Whitefield, a sophomore in the winter of 1941. Whitefield said he was studying in Wilson Library the night of the attack and emerged into a nation on the brink of war. “I didn’t know that anything had happened until I walked to Franklin Street and saw the news on the front page of an evening edition,” Whitefield said. “Emotions immediately ran high for all - the U.S. had been attacked.” Whitefield said that after the attack many students wanted to fight for the cause. He joined the Army in October 1942 and later returned to UNC, graduating in 1948. “It was amazing how everyone came togeth er,” said Whitefield, who worked as a UNC adminis trator from 1970 to 1989. Another tragedy prompted the campus communi ty to come together again in fall 1963. After President John F. Kennedy was shot down Nov. 22, reaction was immediate and sorrow was widespread. Chapel Hill joined a shocked and saddened nation Nov. 25 in observing a national day of mourning. Then-Chancellor William Aycock organized a campus service in Memorial Hall attended by 2,000 people. UNC journalism Professor Jay Anthony was a fresh man in 1963. He said he was returning to his room in Everett Residence Hall when he discovered the news. “It was a real shock to everyone,” he said. “The next couple of weeks everyone was sort of in a depressed stupor.” Anthony said that Kennedy’s death was the begin ning of a loss of innocence for his generation but that the event caused many to make positive personal actions. “Most of us realized that we needed to be involved in the real world and make an impact somehow,” he said. When Martin Luther Kingjr. -another young, inspirational leader - was assassinated almost five years later, students also realized change was needed. Bob Travis, then-student body president, was work ing in the student government office in Graham Memorial on April 4,1968, when he heard the news. Travis said King’s murder came at a time when the social climate of the nation, with civil rights activism at a height and Vietnam protests raging, was in upheaval. “I remember we all thought that America was being tom apart,” Travis said. “There was numbness, real pessimism and a feeling of futility.” On April 5, Travis announced a memorial service to be held in conjunction with King’s funeral. But campus reaction was not all ceremonial. Several marches, not only to honor King but to protest his slaying, were held over the next few days. At several colleges, clashes with police and riots were reported. Todd Cohen, a sophomore in April 1968, covered King’s death and subsequent campus protests for The Daily Tar Heel. “In all cases - Kennedy, King, Sept. 11 - the nation mourned, and in all cases young peo ple were affected and reacted,” Cohen said. Bill Friday, UNC-system president from 1957-86, said that through the troubled times of history, the campus has supported discussions and allowed demon strations. “In all of the cases of reaction to tragedies, we wanted to be sure that people had a right to express themselves but respect the rights of others,” he said. And for Friday, the campus responses to the tragedies suffered by the nation showcase a UNC tradition that carries on through time in unique ways. “Each generation has responded quickly and with great compassion. It is one of the sterling qualities of our student body.” By Jordan Bartel, Assistant Features Editor other religions and cultures. “People are more open to other religions because they want to find out what is going on because it effects us,” Gordon said. Sophomore Kate Frankey, a pharma cy major, had only been on campus for three weeks before the terrorist attacks. But Frankey said she can see a differ ence in students’ perspectives since then. Frankey said that before the attacks she did not watch the news often but that now she is much more interested in what is going on in the world. “I’m much more aware personally,” she said. “I’m not as ignorant as I was before.” Class discussion often turns to Sept. 11, and classmates and teachers seem more tolerant. “No one wants to dis criminate against the victims, but at the same time no one wants to discriminate against other religions,” she said. “It’s anew attitude, not just anew subject." By Meredith Nicholson, Assistant University Editor THROUGHOUT THE TRAGEDIES OF HISTORY, UNCS RESPONSE HAS PROVED THAT THERE IS NOT ONLY EMOTION, THERE IS ACTION KENNEDY ASSASSINATION P|l “Because the man was so alive it is difficult to believe he is now dead. It is not only difficult it is impossible." - Curry Kirkpatrick, DTH Sports Editor, 1963 MLK ASSASSINATION p ~aiFg M Wc sTd h j ty “In all cases— Kennedy, King, Sept. 11 —the nation mourned, and in all cases the young people were affected." -Todd Cohen SEPT. 11 “We have come here to be together on what is dearly one of the darkest and saddest days in our history.... I hope by being here together we can offer some comfort to each other." - James Moeser EXPERIENCES From Centerspread sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” and recited the Lord’s Prayer in English. “We were already crying. You just felt so connected to everyone there,” she said. But Shinn said she felt removed from the U.S. experience because she was abroad. She returned to the United States not having seen pictures of the burning towers, images that were already imbedded in other Americans’ minds. She said she will spend the day connect ing with emotions she missed last year. “Because I was kind of removed from it, I think it will be a different day because it will be very fresh for me.” READ OTHER STUDENTS’ STORIES AT WWW.DAILYTARHEEL.COM By Stephanie M. Horvath, Senior Writer
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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