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By TIM PADGETT Tim Padgett Wed May 4, 12:15 pm ET
There has rarely been a starker juxtaposition of evil and innocence than the
moment President George W. Bush received the news about 9/11 while reading The
Pet Goat with second-graders in Sarasota, Fla.
Seven-year-olds can't understand what Islamic terrorism is all about. But they
know when an adult's face is telling them something is wrong - and none of the
students sitting in Sandra Kay Daniels' class at Emma E. Booker Elementary
School that morning can forget the devastating change in Bush's expression when
White House chief of staff Andrew Card whispered the terrible news of the
al-Qaeda attack. Lazaro Dubrocq's heart started racing because he assumed they
were all in trouble - with no less than the Commander in Chief - but he wasn't
sure why. "In a heartbeat, he leaned back and he looked flabbergasted, shocked,
horrified," recalls Dubrocq, now 17. "I was baffled. I mean, did we read
something wrong? Was he mad or disappointed in us?"
Similar fears started running through Mariah Williams' head. "I don't remember
the story we were reading - was it about pigs?" says Williams, 16. "But I'll
always remember watching his face turn red. He got really serious all of a
sudden. But I was clueless. I was just 7. I'm just glad he didn't get up and
leave, because then I would have been more scared and confused." Chantal
Guerrero, 16, agrees. Even today, she's grateful that Bush regained his
composure and stayed with the students until The Pet Goat was finished. "I
think the President was trying to keep us from finding out," says Guerrero, "so
we all wouldn't freak out."
Even if that didn't happen, it's apparent that the sharing of that terrifying
Tuesday with Bush has affected those students in the decade since - and, they
say, it made the news of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's killing by U.S.
commandos on May 1 all the more meaningful. Dubrocq, now a junior at Riverview
High School in Sarasota, doubts that he would be a student in the rigorous
international-baccalaureate program if he hadn't been with the President as one
of history's most infamous global events unfolded. "Because of that," he says,
"I came to realize as I grew up that the world is a much bigger place and that
there are differing opinions about us out there, not all of them good."
Guerrero, today a junior at the Sarasota Military Academy, believes the
experience "has since given us all a better understanding of the situation,
sort of made us take it all more seriously. At that age, I couldn't understand
how anyone could take innocent lives that way. And I still of course can't. But
today I can problem-solve it all a lot better, maybe better than other kids
because I was kind of part of it." Williams, also a junior at the military
academy, says those moments spent with Bush conferred on the kids a sort of
historical authority as they grew up. "Today, when we talk about 9/11 in class
and you hear kids make mistakes about what happened with the President that
day, I can tell them they're wrong," she says, "because I was there."
One thing the students would like to tell Bush's critics - like liberal
filmmaker Michael Moore, whose 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 911 disparaged Bush
for lingering almost 10 minutes with the students after getting word that two
planes had crashed into the World Trade Center - is that they think the
President did the right thing. "I think he was trying to keep everybody calm,
starting with us," says Guerrero. Dubrocq agrees: "I think he was trying to
protect us." Booker Principal Gwendolyn Tose-Rigell, who died in 2007, later
insisted, "I don't think anyone could have handled it better. What would it
have served if [Bush] had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"
When the children's story was done, Bush left for the school's library, where
he discussed the New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania nightmare with
aides, reporters and another group of students waiting for him. Back in the
classroom, Daniels brought in a television and turned on the first bewildering
images of the Twin Towers in flames and smoke. At that point the kids started
connecting the dots. "It was pretty scary," says Williams, "and I remember
thinking, So that's why the President looked so mad."
Dubrocq got mad himself. "But I had to wait a few years before I could digest
what had really happened and why they attacked us," he says. "I of course grew
up to have nothing but contempt for Osama bin Laden." Yet he adds the episode
"motivated me to get a better handle on the world and to want to help improve
the world." It also made Dubrocq, who wants to study international business,
more aware of his own multinational roots - he's French and Cuban on his
father's side and Spanish and Mexican on his mother's. Not surprisingly, he
also wants to learn other languages, like Chinese and, in an echo of his 9/11
memories, perhaps even Arabic.
Williams says she also hated Bin Laden more as she grew up and gained a better
appreciation of how fanatics had changed her world on 9/11. "All that just
because he wanted to control everybody in the world, control how we think and
what we do," she says. Williams doesn't plan to pursue a military career - she
wants to be a veterinarian - but the military academy student was impressed by
the Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed Bin Laden: "I was shocked - I
thought after 10 years they'd never find him. But what the SEALs did, it, like,
gives me even more respect for that kind of training."
Guerrero, in fact, may as well be part of that training. She also plans a
civilian life - she hopes to study art and musical theater - but she's a Junior
ROTC member and part of her school's state champion Raiders team, which
competes against other academies in contests like rope bridge races, map
navigation and marksmanship. In other words, the same sort of skills the SEAL
commandos have to master. She admits to feeling an added rush when she woke up
to Monday morning's news: the SEALs operation, she says, "was very, very cool."
More than cool, Guerrero says, it was also "so reassuring, after a whole decade
of being scared about these things." Most of all, it "brought back a flood of
memories" of their tragic morning with a President - memories that prove kids
can carry a lot heavier stuff in those plastic backpacks than adults often
realize.