I'm About to Turn 15 Years Old. I Was Born on 9/11. I came into the world just outside New York City on America's darkest day.
As Told To Sarah Rense
Sep 7, 2016
At 6:30 a.m. on the morning of September 11, 2001, Heather and Glenn O'Neill drove to Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut. Heather was preparing to give birth to their second child and first daughter, Hillary. The sky was blue that morning, remarkably blue. "What a beautiful day to have a baby," Heather said to her husband.
Heather, a landscape designer, and Glenn, a sixth grade social studies teacher, arrived at the hospital, started the epidural, and looked for something normal to pass the time. So they turned on Good Morning America. They were still watching as the events of 9/11 began to unfold, when it became clear that this was a terrorist attack, not a small private plane, not an accident. Doctors and nurses rushed about the hospital, counting IV bottles and gathering supplies. Norwalk was preparing itself for overflow from Manhattan emergency rooms. At one point, Glenn, already awake for 38 straight hours, wandered downstairs and saw the makeshift triage center, about 30 beds lined up along a hallway waiting for injured New Yorkers that would never arrive.
As the hours passed, the news kept unfolding, the doctors and nurses kept rushing around, and the baby, Hillary, kept coming. Everyone was distracted. Heather thought, "Wait a minute. I'm having a baby, and the world's falling apart." She asked to turn the TV off at 1:30 p.m. By then, the Pentagon had been hit, Flight 93 had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, and both towers had fallen. At 2:55 p.m., Hillary was born via C-section—Heather had nothing left in her physically or emotionally to push—two full weeks before her scheduled delivery date. Over the next days, as an eerie silence covered the hospital, Heather and Glenn felt they were the only two people in the world with a reason to be happy.
"A child being born—something that is an act of God or an act of nature, which you have absolutely no control over when or how it happens—was about the only thing you could honestly feel good about," Glenn told me.
For nine days of her life, Hillary O'Neill lived in a United States without war. Then, when Hillary was exactly nine days old, President Bush declared a War on Terror. When she was 26 days old, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. When she was 45 days old, President Bush signed the Patriot Act into law. When she was just over two months old, the U.S. founded the TSA. Hillary can't remember a time before "terror." But despite her unlucky—to put it mildly—birthday, she is "very emotionally connected," as her father says, and "sensitive, an old soul," as her mother says.
Hillary, who realized years ago that her name had two Ls in it, like "11," like the Twin Towers, turns 15 years old on September 11, 2016. What follows are her hopes, her fears, and how she processes the complicated story of her birthday, as told in her own words.
My parents never tried to hide it from me. As I got older, they showed me videos and news stories from 9/11, and it sunk in. What people around the world were feeling on 9/11, I feel watching the videos. You can hear the panic in people's voices, how people have no idea what the world is going to be like the next day. It was the first time that I realized the world wasn't just this little bubble that I'd always imagined it to be when I was little.
I also heard about the war going on in the Middle East, but I didn't understand why. Once I understood it was because of 9/11 and fighting terrorism, it brought the effect of what happened on 9/11 to another level for me. The fight against what happened that day is still not over. Over my entire lifespan, that's been an issue that still hasn't been solved. It's frustrating. I never thought of a world being without war—it's the norm for me, and I feel like it's only going to get worse.
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Poster Comment:
Things will only get worse for this poor child.