Englewood High School Students Commemorate 9/11

Students at and the Academies @ Englewood were treated to assemblies commemorating the anniversary of 9/11 Tuesday morning at the Dizzy Gillespie Auditorium in the campus’s south building courtesy of their peers.

Every student at the high school and the Academies got to see one of the two morning assemblies, which were put together by fellow students and included a student Honor Guard, moving and informative Power Point presentations produced by students, two short films chosen by students, student vocalists and a moment of silence befitting the somber occasion.

Many of the students responsible for planning and running the assemblies took an elective class called “Diversity,” which was taught by Janice Acebo and Judy Aaronson. But Aaronson said the event was really the brainchild of senior Jay Locquiao, who also served as MC Tuesday.

Locquiao, who was not part of Aaronson’s class, said he proposed the idea of a ceremony commemorating the tragic events of 9/11 to high school principal Peter Elbert last year on the 10th anniversary, and that once he was given the go-ahead, it took him about three days and a lot of late night phone calls to “pull something together.”

Locquiao said last year was more about the first responders, as were ceremonies held in New York City and elsewhere, but that this year he wanted to do something that reflected the idea of moving forward.

“This year is more about healing and uniting together,” said the senior, who was clad in his Rochelle Park Ambulance Corps uniform Tuesday.

Pointing out that a lot of the kids in attendance were just five or six years old on Sept. 11, 2001, Locquiao said that “remembering and trying to remember what happened 11 years ago” are important, but that there’s also a time when moving on is equally important.

“Something I was always taught is that some bad things will happen to you and good things will happen to you, but they’re just memories at the end,” Locquiao said. “We never forget those memories, but we won’t let the fears or emotions that come with those memories affect us. We’re going to still move on, and we’re still going to grow as a people and start respecting each other and uniting more often.”

Juniors Jessica Surowiec and Stefanie Zapata, who were both members of the diversity class and therefore both were part of a class trip to New York City last year to see the Tribute Center and 9/11 Memorial, were among those who planned the program for Tuesday’s assemblies and made the Power Point presentations, one of which was about that trip.

“At the Tribute Center, I think we were all really impacted,” Zapata said. “There were voicemails, and you would hear people leaving their voicemails to their loved ones.”

Surowiec called the experience “powerful” and “the saddest part” for kids who were part of the fieldtrip.

“And then downstairs, there was this place where it showed how we were reconstructing, how our nation was getting beyond it,” Zapata said. “All of us felt proud to be American.”

Senior Hannah Barry, who was also a member of the diversity class, was in charge Tuesday of making a 3,000-link paper chain that wrapped around the entire auditorium.

“Each link represents a victim, a life lost on 9/11,” Barry said. “You can see it on such a grand scale; that’s what I tried to do, and I think it worked out.”

She added, “I think one of the main themes of this assembly is basically rebuilding hope for the nation as one.”