Bremerton Patriot, September 09, 2011

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PATRIOT BREMERTON

2011 Wave of Pink Women’s Health Topics and Services Available in Kitsap County

WAVE OF PINK Women’s Health topics and services in Kitsap County Inside

a special supplement of the Kitsap News Group

FRIDAY, September 9, 2011 | Vol. 13, No. 35 WWW.BREMERTONPATRIOT.COM | 50¢

‘THE SMILE ... IT WAS GONE’ Students, teachers remember a dark day in American history

Kristin Okinaka/staff photo

“I had no concept of it until I came into the building,” said Klahowya Secondary School teacher Jeff Kreifels when recalling 9/11.

BY KRISTIN OKINAKA KOKINAKA@BREMERTONPATRIOT.COM

J

eff Kreifels arrived at Klahowya Secondary School at about 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001 – about seven minutes before five hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. It’s a 10-minute drive from his home to school, where he teaches, but he was listening to a Christian music station that solely played music while the nation began to hear of the two planes that had already crashed into the World Trade Center. “I had no concept of it until I came into the building,” said Kreifels, recalling 9/11. The teacher he shared an office with told him that a plane flew into a building. He immediately thought it must be some sort of “accident” — a small plane must have hit a building due to a pilot’s miscalculation. Then he saw the images and videos being replayed on TV as small groups of teachers formed in different classrooms watching the news.

“I was in shock. I was losing track of time,” said Kreifels, “The smile or looking-forward-to-the-day look, it was 45. He added that the room he was in was quiet and no gone. It was just a blank look,” he said of his students’ faces one was talking. after they learned about what had happened in New York Nancy Marrill Hanners, Kreifel’s colleague who was City. the one that broke the news to him, said she didn’t know For his first period class, they watched the TV. Into the about the incident until she arrived at school that morning second hour of the day, school administrators advised and saw news coverage of the attacks in the school office. teachers to return to their planned curriculum for the day. “I stood in disbelief, it felt much like the His students were studying the U.S. colday President Kennedy was assassinated,” onies at the time, but they were not enthushe said. about covering it on 9/11, he said. “The kids were asking siastic Around 7 a.m., students began arriving “The kids were asking the same questhe same questions to school, and the principal gathered the tions the newscasters were: Why did this the newscasters were: happen? Why was this not prevented?” staff to check in and make sure everyone was OK and that they were “on the same Why did this happen? Kreifels said. He tried to answer their page” in terms of how they would go about Why was this not question as best he could but they were the school day. the same questions he had. And although prevented?” The initial direction was that it was fine he never said it to his students, Kreifels – Jeff Kreifels, teacher to watch the news in the classrooms and thought to himself, “Is this done? How that if students needed to see a counselor, much worse is this going to get?” they could do so, said Kreifels. After the school day, he talked with his School started at 7:25 a.m. and Kreifels wife, Kristi Kreifels, over the phone. She said that about half of his eighth grade students in his and their three daughters, who ranged in age from 4 to 8 English and history class did not know about the attacks at the time, were at a cabin on Anderson Island for a short when they arrived. Either he or another student had to vacation. inform those who came to class not knowing anything “I had an overwhelming sense of needing to protect my about the South Tower of the World Trade Center, which girls — not wanting to frighten them — but wanting to had fallen by then. SEE REMEMBERING, A8


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