Blog 15

Christopher Caruso

Blog #15

For my Oral History Interview, I interviewed Sarah Brittain about her experiences during the September 11th Attacks.  During the incident, Sarah was twelve years old and in the 7th grade.  She was in the middle of English class when another teacher walked in and told her English teacher to turn on the television.  Sarah sat in the classroom and watched the smoking buildings live on television.  With her own eyes she saw the plane crash into the second tower.  During the questioning until this point, Sarah appeared calm and collected, yet hesitant to talk.  She then revealed that this was the first and only time that she saw her stepfather cry.  It was here that Sarah, with a shaky voice revealed that her step-father's best friend, who was very close to the family, was actually in the 34th floor of one of the towers when they were hit.  His body was never found.  It was at this point that the memories began to become to much for Sarah, and she began to cry.  At this point, after I temporarily left the room to fetch Sarah some tissue paper to dry her tears, I felt that this interview was becoming too much for Sarah to handle emotionally, and we stopped the questioning right then and there.  Even after over eleven year, the tragic events of the attacks still deeply affect people to this day.  Perhaps what the professor that assigned this interview topic failed to realize (possibly due to her living in the Mid-West during the events) is that people who lived on the East Coast during these events, specifically people within the Kean University area due to its close proximity to New York City, tend to remember these events much more sensitively than most others, due to many individuals directly or indirectly knowing others involved with the attacks in some way, shape, or form.  Sometimes it is hard, and virtually too painful or uncomfortable for certain individuals to dig up such memories that they have spent years trying to come to terms with.  As such, what I learned from this interview was how to tell when an individual feels uncomfortable by certain questions and certain situations, and also learned at what point an individual should drop an interview if the subject becomes too much for the interviewee to handle.