GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Students climbed the bleachers at Green Bay West High School on Friday as a tribute to the first responders who rushed into the World Trade Center now 20 years ago.
Students taking part climb the stairs eleven times to represent just one-tenth of the floors in the World Trade Center. Autumn Dickey is a Physical Education teacher who also heads the ‘Fuel Up to Play 60’ program, which helps set up the event.
“Our group of kids has been doing this for about 10 years. They like to do our annual kick off event of the 9/11 bleacher climb just to remember and honor those that have given the ultimate sacrifice,” Dickey told WTAQ News. “Firefighters from Green Bay Metro station #3 down the road bring an ambulance and fire truck. They show kids some of the gear, they can put on the coats to feel how hot it is when you’re doing the steps. The National Guard came out to hold the moment of silence, and they also brought rucksacks up to 75 pounds.”
Throughout the day, different classes went out to the field to participate in the climb. Despite being a French language teacher, Lorraine Poplaski says she took all of her classes outside.
“I thought it very important to bring them out here for today, because I hear a lot of them say ‘Well yeah, 9/11. Okay, whatever.’ They don’t have that feeling for it because they weren’t around. But it’s been 20 years, and I think [they] really do need to take a look at this,” Poplaski said. “Realize what it meant and how it changed things. And maybe you don’t understand it today, but down the road you’ll understand. [Especially] when something else could happen, and god forbid something more horrible like this happens again.”
She says students nowadays seem to have a bit of a disconnect from the purpose of the climb and the event itself. While it’s understandable, she says it’s still something they should learn and grasp.
“What floors me now is that all of my students weren’t even born,” Poplaski said. “They don’t really have any feeling at all, obviously. It’s like me saying Pearl Harbor. I don’t have any feeling, but I can respect the the fact of what happened, historically what it meant for the world. And with 9/11, I have felt every change that has happened.”
While maybe not all students fully grasp exactly what happened in the years leading up to their birth, Senior Jakub Knotz says that shouldn’t matter.
“It’s a tragedy, no matter if I was born then or not. It still happened, and those people still died,” Knotz told WTAQ News. “I think it’s very important for everybody to remember. History teaches great lessons, and we need to remember those lessons.”
So Jakub wasn’t even a twinkle in his parents eyes at the time, but Poplaski and Dickey were around. And they were both working at Green Bay West at the time.
Poplaski says she was teaching classes between Franklin Middle School and West High in 2001. She first heard the news of the attacks while on the road between those classes.
“I remember hearing about a plane hitting the buildings and thinking: ‘That can’t be real, that’s something out of movies,” Poplaski said.
She kept the news off in her classrooms that day, and allowed other teachers, like Social Studies teachers, handle the situation.
Meanwhile, we spoke to Autumn Dickey not too far from the exact spot she had been standing when the call came in 20 years ago.
“On that day, I was on this field. My kids were playing football. On the walkie-talkie, I heard ‘Emergency, everybody [get] in the building. We’re being attacked’,” Dickey said. “Fearing with kids in lock-down like: Where is it? What’s going on? Then watching and hearing the events unfold, it’s giving me goosebumps. You never forget it.”
Hundreds of people will also be in the area on Saturday for the Lambeau Field stair climb.
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