Remembering Sept. 11 at Union: Faith in an Uncertain World

Sarah Jane (Head) Drury began Sept. 11, 2001, as she did every day as a Union University senior. She was up, getting ready for class and watching TV when her morning routine was interrupted by a phone call. A roommate’s mom called to tell them to change the channel.

Immediately bombarded with footage and clips of the World Trade Center towers, Drury sat on the arm of the living room chair until her leg fell asleep. Neither she nor her roommates had any idea how to proceed.

Twenty-five years later, those early moments remain vivid in Drury’s memory, as they do for others who were on Union’s campus that day. For many, Sept. 11 brought beliefs they had considered in classrooms and chapel into the reality of a frightening and uncertain world, challenging them to understand what it meant to live out their faith when the world suddenly seemed unstable.

“I think it was the first time when the theoretical things that we had been wrestling with in the classroom became reality,” Drury said. “Because, if we say we believe this, now we have to actually live it.”

David S. Dockery, Union’s president from 1996 to 2014, was on his way to a meeting near Nashville when news on the radio delivered the breaking story that airplanes had hit the World Trade Center towers. With a phone call back to campus, he encouraged campus leaders to arrange a time of prayer and to focus on helping the students.

Campus minister Todd Brady (’92) was heading downstairs to walk Buster when he noticed his wife, Amy, watching TV. It was clear something significant and terrible was happening. It wasn’t long before his phone rang. Carla Sanderson, Union’s provost, was on the line urging him to come to campus as quickly as possible.

Cam (Armstrong) Conn (’05) was just starting her freshman year, and during an 8 a.m. public speaking class the professor stepped out of class for a moment only to return with news that the Twin Towers had been hit. Conn admits she didn’t fully know what the Twin Towers were nor did she grasp the full scale of what was happening.

Returning to her dorm, she, like most students on campus, gathered around a TV with friends and roommates to watch news coverage.

Fellow freshman Brian Taylor (’05) was making his way to The Lex for breakfast when he learned that an airplane had crashed into one of the towers. Every TV was tuned to the news, and Taylor remembers all the questions students were asking, trying to understand what was taking place.

As Taylor headed to his first class in the PAC, he noticed Union Station buzzing with activity and non-stop phone calls from parents. It was frantic.

No Reference Point

For Drury, having never lived through a crisis or major national event, she had no idea what to do next.

“We had no reference point,” she said.

Eventually, she and her roommates went to their next class, but no one could focus. No one really knew what to do with the information that the United States had been attacked.

“We were just kind of confused,” she said.

Amid confusion, uncertainty and a sense of being unprepared for an emergency, Drury received an invitation to read a passage of Scripture at the chapel service that evening.

Meanwhile, Conn, who had just gone through sorority rush, gathered with her new Chi Omega sisters to pray for the families of those who had died. As a small-town girl from Dyersburg, Tennessee, Conn remembers the attacks feeling far away. But while surrounded by her friends that day, she began to cry for those she didn’t know.

“It was part of growing up,” she said, “seeing that there’s a world out there that is hurting, and right now our role is to think of them and to pray for them and to care about them.”

With hearts focused on ministering to the students, Dockery, Brady and other campus leaders were burdened with how they could help students. That evening, the campus community made its way to the chapel. Students filled the seats and the aisles, kneeling on the floor as several faculty, staff and students read Scripture and led prayers.

“We all prayed according to Lamentations 3:22-24,” Dockery said. The verses are a reminder of the Lord’s steadfast love, his mercies and faithfulness. Special prayers focused on President George W. Bush and those making key decisions in Washington D.C., New York City, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.

“It was one of the most powerful chapels we ever had,” Brady said. “It was one of the most unifying chapels that I’ve ever experienced.”

Sitting in the chapel, Drury wondered if the young men to her left and right would be drafted and go to war. But it was during that service that Drury began to reconcile the reality of her fear and uncertainty with the truth that God was sovereign and in control.

“It was like we were experiencing what the Psalms were often talking about,” she said.

Jim Huggins, professor and chair of Union University’s biology department, leads in prayer in a service held September 11, 2001, in Union’s chapel where students, faculty and staff gathered to pray for victims of the terrorist attacks and for the country.

God is Our Refuge

During that 2001 chapel service, the words of Psalm 46 filled the air:

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth give way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.”

For Brady, the psalm’s picture of steady ground amid chaos matched exactly what he felt that week. “We didn’t even know what kind of help we needed as a nation,” he said. “We didn’t even know what help our leaders needed.”

Throughout the coming days, Brady returned to that psalm repeatedly, sharing it and reading it with others across campus. To this day, Brady is overcome with the memory of what he calls a “God-entranced unity.” Students broke out of cliques and set aside political differences and came together at the feet of God.

“There was an awareness of God that was almost palpable,” he said. “Everyone was looking to God.”

Jason Vaughan (’04, ’08), who was just starting his sophomore year, attended the chapel with his roommates and afterward tried to go through the coming days as normally as possible.

“But you didn’t feel normal,” Vaughan said. “You were still trying to go to the next class, go to the Wellness Center to work out, go to the cafeteria to eat, but in the back of your mind, this was happening and was an ongoing thing.”

There were students, overcome with an impending sense of doom, who wondered when the next bad thing would happen. For some, the event felt far away and detached from their daily life. Others questioned how they, as college students, could make a difference. For a group of art students, that answer arrived a few weeks later.

Senior art major Eric Botbyl of Medford, New Jersey, joined other art students in creating an installation that stretched across the perimeter of campus. White flags represented the lives lost in the attack on the World Trade Center. Dark flags, the lives of the terrorists. The display was unavoidable.

Taylor remembers the display and how thousands of individual lives became visible across the campus landscape. Years later, it is a key memory for him.

At the center of the installation, between the Penick and Blasingame buildings, the students built a 12-ton stone altar. It stood as a memorial to the tragedy and, amid grief and uncertainty, a reminder of God’s presence and work in the lives of the Union community.

Looking back, Taylor recalls how supportive the faculty were during the days and weeks that followed, a sentiment Drury echoed, noting that only after having her own children did she realize the lengths faculty and staff went to minister to students.

“I realize what a difficult path that must have been for them to try to keep calm while navigating their own fears,” she said.

Professors were open to discussion, rearranged assignments and encouraged students to lean on and apply their faith.

“I remember my Old Testament class focusing on the question, ‘How do we respond as Christians?’” Taylor said.

In the months that followed, campus leadership offered a series of special lectures about the history, culture and politics of Islam. A year later, Union hosted another chapel to recognize the first anniversary of the attacks and remember the victims of Sept. 11.

Vaughan, who now has teenage children, has taken time throughout the years to teach them about that day and how life has changed since then.

“That day is a historical marker for them,” Vaughan said. “They have no clue that life before that day was very, very different from life after it.”

The world has changed in ways that prior to Sept. 11 would have seemed unimaginable, Dockery noted. There are greater security issues now, and the reality of terrorism is evident in the United States and around the world.  Despite those changes, Dockery remains steadfast, echoing many of the sentiments he shared 25 years ago.

“We can still trust a providential God who is directing the affairs of human history toward a God-ordained destiny for his glory,” Dockery said. “When the world seems wobbly and when focus is unclear, we can still trust the faithfulness of God. In the midst of these things, we need not grow callous or cynical, but we must be ever mindful of the need to encourage one another while it is still called today.”