Schools

Winners of Exchange Club's 9/11 Essay Competition

"I missed show-and-tell that day. In exchange, I was shown the unwavering togetherness of a nation."

The winners for this year's 9/11 essay contest for students were announced earlier this month at the San Ramon Council Chamber.

The prompt asked students, "Why do we have a Memorial Ceremony on September 11th?"

The contest was open to 1st through 12th grade students, with prizes ranging from $50 to $500.

First place winner and Michaela Gines, senior at Monte Vista High School, was only 5 years old when the planes hit the World Trade Center in 2001. Her essay is featured at the bottom of this post.

Winners:

Grades 1 to 4

1. Sophia Kraskowsky, 4th grade, $150
2. Kyle Lew, 3rd grade, $100
3. Andrew Yee, 4th grade, $ 50

Grades 5 to 8

1.  Kyungbin Oh, 6th grade, $300
2.  Avery Chapman, 7th grade, $200 
3.  Danya Gao, 8th grade, $100

Grades 9 to 12

1.  Michaela Gines, 12th grade, $500
2.  Alex Colello, 9th grade, $300
3.  Sophia Colello, 9th grade $200 

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9/11 SRV Exchange Club Essay Competition
By Michaela Gines

I was five.

I didn’t go to school that morning. My two sisters and I sat in the living room quietly. In the kitchen, my mom was on the phone asking my dad to come home from work.

I kept thinking about kindergarten, and how it had been my day for show-and-tell. It made me sad to think my class would miss out on the glory of my new ballet shoes.

The TV was on, but I wasn’t watching. Would Mrs. Beery let me do show-and-tell 
tomorrow instead?

That day blurred in with the rest of kindergarten. I never learned the true implications of what had happened until I was much older.

It is astonishing to believe that many of the children that live on my street have not even lived through that day. And I, at five, did not have much to say about it.

We watch countless videos and flip through masses of photos of the ashes in the sky and the broken pieces on the streets. But because it’s impossible to go back in time and live that day as adults, we children struggle to understand what it was like.

Then we hear the words in a memorial. Words of survivors. And as we hear further, we’re not just hearing anymore, but listening.

Children and young adults, with our ears made to listen and absorb the wisdom of those older than us. Suddenly, the survivor’s world has become our own. The survivor has decades on us, yet it seems as if the sole commonality of being American suffices as the tie. We have a memorial because it is the resulting shared experience that perpetuates our nation’s unity across the expanse of generations.

I missed show-and-tell that day. In exchange, I was shown the unwavering togetherness of a nation.


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