As the students of West Morris Regional Highschool now settle into the very first weeks of school, we recollect and recall all the good memories of our summer. Junior student Emma Stark, in particular, had an adequate summer. 

To make the most of the end of the summer, Emma and her family spent a weekend in New York. There she walked around, went to dinner, and visited the 9/11 memorial. Emma said that she’d seen the memorial before with her whole family. But this summer, “I was only with my dad, we just spontaneously decided to walk over there after dinner, it was quick we walked a couple of miles and just looked at it, it was really pretty.”

 In New York City, the 9/11 memorial is one of the most notable places in the city. When Emma went there in the summer, she said that she found “All of the names that were written”(on the surrounding tablets) most interesting about the 9/11 memorial. “We just spent the weekend, we were hanging out, we wanted to get out of New Jersey for a bit, take a last-minute quick trip before school started, make the most of the end of summer,” said Emma. 

Re-visiting the memorial wasn’t the only activity Emma and her family had planned for the weekend. She trekked across the Brooklyn bridge, stood atop of The Edge, and spent the night walking around Pier 25 looking out across the water to see Jersey City.

Her Mom, who worked 25 minutes away from the World Trade Center at the time, was running late for work. While the Plane hit the North Tower, Emma’s mom was still at home. Normally her Mom took the train from Hoboken to 33rd street, but since she was running late she couldn’t make the train. Emma’s parents who lived in Hoboken at the time and during the attacks, they could see the black smoke rising over the Manhattan horizon.

In hindsight, it’s a blessing that her parents couldn’t get to work that day. She noted that,