Lipscomb professors remember 9/11

Written alongside Chrissy Julien.

25 years ago, millions watched as planes hit the World Trade Center, taking thousands of lives. Among those watching the tragedy unfold were Lipscomb students and faculty. Some were in the middle of tests, others studying abroad. These are the stories of professors, from that day.

Jimmy McCollum

Jimmy McCollum thought it had to be a mistake.

“I, and much of America, thought, ‘Oh, some poor private plane pilot got disoriented, or there must be some fog,'” McCollum remembered.

Half an hour later, Dr. Mac cancelled his journalism class after a second plane hit the World Trade Center. 

“I remember telling (the class), ‘Your grandparents had Pearl Harbor. And your parents had the John F. Kennedy assassination. And this is your day. This is our day. We will always know where we were when we learned this news,’” said McCollum.

McCollum admires the courage of the journalists in New York City who ran towards the destruction to tell the story of 9/11.

“They knew they had a job to do. And they embraced the smoke and the ash and the danger to get close.”

In the hours following the attacks, McCollum remembered watching planes streaking down towards the Nashville Airport to clear the airspace. 

“So many people drove to the airport and just looked for people and said, ‘Hey, get in my car if you need to go to Chicago. I’ll take you home.’” It was one of the beautiful things about 9/11,” McCollum recalled.

He also remembers the sense of patriotism that united America in the weeks following the attacks.

“There was a wonderful sense of patriotism. People were wearing USA or flag pins. They were wearing yellow ribbons. So for a little while…there was a wonderful sense of unity in America.”

Jim Thomas

Retired communications professor Jim Thomas learned of the attack at a hotel in Vienna.

Fall of 2001 marked 55-year-old Thomas’ first time outside the country. Lipscomb entrusted him to lead a group of students during a study abroad trip in Austria.

He had been studying at the Austro-American Institute, which hosted the program. Upon returning to his hotel, his wife greeted him with the question so many asked on that day. “I walked in the door and my wife said, ‘Have you heard what happened?’”

At the time, Austria received one English-speaking television station: CNN. 

“Within three minutes of my turning it on, the second plane hit the tower,” said Thomas.

Thomas had one phone to contact his students. In Austria, the planes hit the towers around 2 and 3 p.m., a time in which students could’ve been away from the hotel. 

“My first thought was, where are all the students?” he said. “Because I didn’t know how widespread this was or what was going on.”

The students, gathered at the hotel, “handled it amazingly well,” said Thomas. “It was fantastic to step back and just watch them be mature adults, understanding people are frightened, and pulling people together.”

  Within 30 minutes, calls from Lipscomb came in. The initial calls asked about the students’ and Thomas’ safety. As panic rose, however, calls became requests.

“We had a great deal of problem indicating to the administration here ‘it’s a calm place!’” he recalled. “I got a number of calls from parents saying ‘send our children back home.’”

While the emotional aftermath of the attacks rippled through America, society in Austria saw little change. “The people in Vienna were not concerned. They were ‘oh, so sorry this happened, can we take your order?’” said Thomas. 

Thomas did see acts of kindness, however, from the locals. “When we would go to restaurants, there would be letters to America, apologizing for what had happened.”

Ultimately, Thomas knew the students needed him to be courageous in this moment of fear. He showed this through his leadership and through his counsel.

Six girls on the trip asked to meet with Thomas, not long after the attacks. During that meeting, they told him, “’Dr. Thomas, we think that you think we’re not scared.’” Thomas’ response surprised them, “I said ‘I don’t think you’re scared.’”

His message for his students at the time was simple: “You don’t need to worry about this. We’re in control,” he said. 

The trip concluded successfully, with students still enjoying weekend trips to other European countries, and all returning to Lipscomb unharmed.

Matt Hearn

Matt Hearn had been at Lipscomb University for two years when the morning of September 11th, 2001 dawned.

“It was a beautiful fall day. It was a clear, blue sky. Everybody was still fresh and starting new classes,” Hearn remembered.

The English professor was in the office early that morning when one of his coworkers came over to turn on the TV.

“He asked, ‘Hey, did you guys know that an airplane flew into one of the towers in New York?’”

The department stood together watching the news, and tried to figure out what was going on. “They were showing live video, and then we saw another airplane fly into the second tower,” Hearn said. “We were confused. We thought: surely that’s not a second plane. But now there’s two towers on fire.”

Soon, Hearn and the rest of the Lipscomb community found out the terrible truth. A second and third plane had just crashed, and that a fourth was still somewhere in the air.

“The bottom kind of dropped out of the world we thought we were living in…it was just unimaginable. We didn’t know what it would change, but everybody kind of had a feeling that this might just change everything,” said Hearn.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Hearn said he saw a change in how some Americans viewed their Middle Eastern neighbors. “We had a lot of students at the time from Kurdistan, and they were frightened. Not because of anything particular on Lipscomb’s campus, but the whole tenor of Nashville darkened with regard to how people treated strangers.”

Gary Hall

Longtime mathematics professor Gary Hall doesn’t give his students tests. He hosts ‘parties.’ It was during a Calculus 3 that he learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

“We need to say prayer,” was the first thing Hall told his students.

The students finished their test before going to the lobby of McFarland to watch the news. His students weren’t the only ones in the lobby. “Everybody was listening to the radio or watching TV,” said Hall. “The word was spreading like wildfire.”

Hall was among those left uncertain about a loved one’s well-being that day. His oldest brother was on a work trip in Washington, D.C. when Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. “My parents and I, we couldn’t get a hold of him,” said Hall. “He was okay, but we didn’t know for the longest time, until later that night.”

Hall lived with this uncertainty throughout the rest of the school day. Hall recalls students gathering for an emotional chapel. Afterwards, he chose to give another one of his ‘parties.’ 

He gave students the option to leave, but would administer it to any who wished to take the test. “I don’t want these people to think they won by disrupting our lives,” he told them. Most of his students chose to take the test.

Though life went on after the attacks, they continued to impact the nation.  “You would see replays, constant replays, of what had happened,” Hall said. “It was a sobering time.”

On campus, Hall saw students doing what they could to support the victims.

“People were praying all over campus,” said Hall. “Praying that they would find some of the people still alive underneath the buildings. Praying that just somebody could be saved. Praying for peace.”

Now, 25 years later, Lipscomb students continue to gather in prayer on the anniversary of 9/11. They pray for the victims and their families, but also that the lesson the tragedy taught the nation will not be forgotten. A message Hall describes as one of unity.

“Instead of arguing with one another about politics and such, we need to be bringing people together, under God.”

Feature image courtsey of Lipscomb archives.