politics
World Trade Center steel beam arrives at Florida school where Bush learned of 9/11
A steel beam recovered from the World Trade Center arrived Tuesday at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. The delivery marks the seventh stop on the Tunnel to Towers Foundation's Steel Across America tour ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
May 21, 11:16 AM·2m read1 source
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A steel beam recovered from the World Trade Center arrived Tuesday at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. The beam was brought to the school as part of the Tunnel to Towers Foundation's Steel Across America tour commemorating the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Sept.
11 attacks. The school is the site where then-President George W. Bush was visiting a second-grade classroom on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when he learned of the attacks. Former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, who informed Bush that a second plane had struck the World Trade Center, attended the ceremony.
Card returned to the campus Tuesday alongside former second-grade teacher Sandra Kay Daniels, whose classroom Bush was visiting when the attacks unfolded. "Just being on this campus and remembering what happened when I came and whispered in the president's ear that America was under attack ...
it takes you right back to that day, the feelings, the emotion, the duty, the honor," Card said. Daniels said the memories of that morning have stayed with her ever since. "That day changed not only Emma E. Booker Elementary School students and staff, but it changed the world, the community," Daniels said.
"It's an everyday thing for me," Daniels added. "I will never get away from that. " Inside the school's library, a section dedicated to Sept. 11 includes an original copy of "The Pet Goat," the book students were reading when Bush received the news.
The Sarasota stop marked the seventh destination on the nationwide remembrance tour.
The ceremony included appearances from local officials, first responders and members of the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which was founded in honor of FDNY firefighter Stephen Siller, who died responding to the attacks in New York City. Former students who were inside the classroom that morning also returned to the school Tuesday, including Natalia Jones-Pinkney, who was seated just feet away from Bush during the reading lesson.
