"It Changed The Way We Live" Manassas Park, VA Resident Reflects on the Decade After Sept. 11

“It has changed the way we live,” 27-year-old Marko Clement said of that day, Tuesday, Sept. 11 2001.  

 The Manassas Park, Va. resident said she was a teenager in second or third period at the city’s high school when she heard about the events that transpired in New York City and in Arlington, the latter about 45 minutes from her home.

"They made an announcement … I went to my government class and we got to watch the news in the library,” she said. “I was very surprised.  I mean terrorism, is not something we are used to seeing in the states.”

Clement, who lived one year in her parents home country of Liberia when she was small,said her mother and father weren’t surprised by the events of Sept. 11. They lived in Liberia at the time the Liberian President William Tolbert assassinated, but were already in America during the Coup D’Etat and subsequent civil war that followed.

“It’s not like they thought America was so safe,” she said. Her parents had always planned to go back to Liberia, but stayed because of the war in the land.

Ten years after Sept. 11, Clement said security in America is heighten and everything—especially the way we travel—has changed.