LOGANSPORT — Hailee Boehme carefully drew her picture of a crowd of people holding a giant American flag onto a piece of white fabric.
Her picture became one square in a quilt designed to remember Sept. 11, 2001.
But Hailee herself doesn’t remember anything about that day. The third-grader at Columbia Elementary School wasn’t even born when airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center towers killing thousands.
“I didn’t know anything about it,” she said.
Ten years after the attacks, her teacher, Lu Schroder, tried to explain to Hailee and her classmates what happened.
“I started from the beginning with them,” Schroder said. “I told them about the attacks without scaring them.”
She spent a week teaching her students about the importance of that day and of the patriotism that followed.
“We’ve been learning the meaning of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and the Pledge of Allegiance,” she said.
They also talked about patriotic symbols. And when the lesson was over, all of the students chose their favorite patriotic symbol or phrase to depict on their very own quilt square.
There were kids who drew the White House and World Trade Center towers.
One depicted the Statue of Liberty. Scrawled across the top were the words, “The Land of Liberty! 2011.”
Schroder’s sister, Lisa Williams, worked all afternoon sewing the fabric squares into a quilt that would be hung at the school.
Across town at Lincoln Middle School, teacher Mary Pomasl cried as she talked to the students there about what went through her mind when she watched the towers fall 10 years ago.
“All I wanted to do was go home and be with my kids,” she said. “I was scared.”
Anita Vernon said that was a feeling most of the students at Lincoln Middle School couldn’t relate to. Even the eighth-graders were young when the attacks happened, she said.
“They didn’t have a true grasp of what 9/11 is,” Vernon said. “We want them, come Sunday, to have an understanding of what that day means.”
Vernon organized a “Day of Remembrance” program for all students at Lincoln Middle School. Firefighters Ted Franklin and Mark Strong talked to the kids about their trip to ground zero a week after the attacks, and teachers and staff members shared their memories of that day 10 years ago.
Maria Cook had a unique perspective to share.
“I was in my home country of Mexico that day,” Cook told the students.
She hadn’t yet moved to the United States, but she remembers seeing footage of the attacks on television. What she remembered most, she said, was how Americans responded in the aftermath, though.
She said people in Mexico noticed the “courage and determination” of the Americans.
“We admired you for that,” she said.
Teachers cried as they watched pictures of the attacks flash across a giant screen. Music played in the background. At one point a girl got up from her seat on the gym floor and hugged her teacher.
“We tried to stay away from the doom and gloom,” Vernon said. “But we wanted them to know what we felt and hope they never have to feel that way.”
Hailee took away a message of hope from her lessons on Sept. 11, 2001.
She didn’t remember the rubble that was left behind after the crashes.
“I learned that they put lights where the towers were, and they’re going to rebuild those towers some day,” she said.
• Lindsey Ziliak is a staff writer at the Pharos-Tribune. She can be reached at 574-732-5148 or lindsey.ziliak@pharostribune.com.
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