Article January 28, 2002 Issue

'I decided to just keep going on with it'

By Dave Hohle Sentinel staff

In the days and weeks following September 11, college freshman Brett Fletcher-McGookin came to view the terrorist attacks as attempts to engender fear and insecurity. And she decided to try to not play into it. "Different people had very different ways of dealing with it," she says. "I really just figured that the terrorists were trying to say, 'Feel uncomfortable. Feel insecure in a place that you feel is all about God and good and security.' And so I just tried to really live my life through loving, and not let myself get scared or plugged into that terror."

Brett appreciates the support the students received from their school and from each other. She remembers, "The president of the college called an all-campus meeting, and we all gathered in Cox Auditorium. Ideas were shared, and we had some time to just sit there and pray. For ten minutes, everyone was silent. And it was the coolest thing. I think a lot of people got a whole lot of inspiration out of that, because the whole room—even though it was silent—was just filled. You know what I mean? It just gave people strength. And I think that experience and having that feeling gave them a kind of knowledge that what they were doing was effective."

A conversation she had with her mom was helpful to Brett. "I think it was probably after I talked to my mother that I had a better grasp of what I was thinking," she recalls, "because when I first heard about what had happened, it was just shocking. Mom pointed out that I should be alert to the mental attacks, and not just the physical ones.