Evelyn Squires and her mom, Sarah Squires, discuss living through historical events

00:04 Hi, my name is Evelyn squires, and I'm 17 years old. Today is Sunday, November 26th, and I'm speaking with Sarah Squires, who's my mom. We're recording in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. All right. So, Mom, I want to ask you, what would you say is probably one of the biggest parts of history that you yourself has lived through?

00:23 I would say probably the biggest event is 9 11.

00:28 And how old were you when that happened?

00:30 I was 26.

00:34 Can you kind of explain to me, like, where you were when you heard the news and like, how you heard about it? Like, when. What was it that told you about what was actually happening at 9 11?

00:44 Well, I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, with your dad. We lived on Ivy Road, which was about seven miles from heart of downtown Charlottesville. And it's kind of in the country. And as is typical with your mom, I was running a few minutes late to work, which was fine, no one was worried about it. But I was trying to get there, and I ran out the door, grabbed something to drink and turned on npr, as I do when I get in the car every morning. And I heard this news report that crazy stuff was happening in New York and planes. It just, none of it made sense. I thought, this has to be some sort of spoof radio, like, comedy hour, like something. It was so implausible that it just. It seemed like it was not real. And I can remember driving down this country road in the middle of Virginia and looking out to a pasture of cows thinking, like, everything is fine. This is the weirdest thing. And in the, I don't know, 15 minutes that it took me to drive into Charlottesville, and the news kept becoming more and more unbelievable. I realized this was real and things were really happening that were. That you couldn't even imagine. So I parked my car and I went the two flights up to my office and the radio was already on. I shared an office with a girl named Jill, and she had turned the radio on and we were listening to just unbelievable things. There was an accountant in the office space next to us, and they had a television. And so we knocked on their door and came in, and everybody in our small little building was huddled around a maybe 14 inch television and just in absolute awe of what was going on. Within minutes of the first plane hitting, all of the telephone lines were jammed. You couldn't make telephone calls because too many people were trying to make telephone calls. Charlottesville is about an hour and a half, maybe hour, hour and a half from D.C. and there's lots of government things Charlottesville. So it, it was like the whole town was electric and stunned by what was going on.

03:40 So since the telephone lines were like you couldn't get to anybody. So I'm guessing like you couldn't call dad. Where was he during. Where was he during all? He was at home.

03:50 He had a studio to teach. He was teaching at UVA at the time. He was teaching an architecture studio and his studio didn't start until 1 in the afternoon. So he didn't normally get up as early as I did. So I mid to late morning I got it, I finally got a call through to him and he was watching it and the university had actually called him into studio to be there early so that if any of his students were concerned or stressed out or needed someone that all of the professors would be there on hand to be there for the students in case they were needed.

04:41 So I'm guessing there. So were there a lot of students that had families that were from Washington D.C. since it's the proximity?

04:50 Yeah, he had I think one student whose, I know one, at least one if not two students who had parents who worked in the Pentagon. So there was a lot of panic amongst students trying to figure out where their parents were, what was going on, if they were safe. It felt very close, especially once the Pentagon was hit.

05:17 Did you know anybody in New York at the time of that was there?

05:23 Well, your uncle and aunt had moved exactly 24 hours previous the day before from New York to San Francisco. So my closest family had just left New York 24 hours before and we were very thankful but we had not talked to him. So we were trying to call and make sure that they really did get that flight out.

05:54 Yeah.

05:54 So yeah, it was, it was a little nerve wracking. But more than that, it was just like you didn't even, it was like all the air in the room was gone. It just, you didn't know how to react. Nothing like that had ever been seen or experienced. Experienced before. And it was, it was just stunning.

06:17 So this is an assignment for economics. So since and you're talking about how everything was just changing like right in that moment and you've kind of explained your reactions to what was happening but to bring it to the economic side of it for a second, like how do you think that event like 911 in particular, do you think, how do you think that shaped the economy and how people were dealing with that for like the first few weeks after its occurrence? Because especially with 911 in New York, because New York is Like the center for a lot of, like, common stocks and all the things up there.

06:54 Well, I think before talking about what it did, maybe nationally or internationally, I would say it was a very personal effect to the company that I worked for and to our own personal economy. I worked for a small firm. We had four designers. It was an interior design firm. And because of our proximity, we did a lot of projects for federally funded or federally adjacent organizations. And so everything happened on 9, 11. And then we went to work, you know, the next day, not knowing what was going to happen. And starting at about 9 o'clock in the morning, we got phone call after phone call until by 2:00 that day, every single project that we had, every project had been put on hold or was canceled completely. So we had, we had zero work to do that we were authorized to do and authorized to bill for. And that is a stunning and scary thing.

08:19 So when that happened, because you had like nothing authorized to work on, what, what did y'all do?

08:27 The owner of the firm was maybe 40, 42. She, she was the owner of the firm and had an affiliation with an architecture firm. And she went to them and said, you know, you know, do you have any projects that we can draw that we can, you know, basically be your draftsman for? Like, we just were looking for any work to do, and there were a few little things that we did, but she asked us if we would go to half time or, you know, part time in some way. One girl was happy to do that. She had young children and was happy to do a day on, a day off. I cut back by a day. So I worked four instead of five days. And we gave all of our clients some breathing room for a few weeks and kept in touch with them and finally said, you know, when it was appropriate, depending on the project. Hey, you know, the economy is still going to keep moving and we don't know exactly what's going to happen, but, you know, we're doing your doctor's office and women are still going to have babies and they're still going to need to come in and sit in waiting rooms and have artwork to look at them, to distract them while they're talking about happy and sad and new things. And, you know, we're still going to need to outfit your office space. There's still going to be people to work for. It was just.

10:18 There was.

10:18 There was a lot of fear. And a lot of times when people are afraid, they just stop. They stop everything because they don't know what to do. So we had to kind of play psychologists to know when to ask. But as we were able to build back projects that, you know, we started getting back in business. But, you know, it affected everybody. You know, restaurants slowed down because lots of businesses kind of seized in those first few minutes. So there was a ripple effect, but it was a very personal effect for us.

11:00 How did it affect dad with teaching studio art and stuff? Did UVA, because of its proximity to D.C. because they had so many students, had parents working there, did they shut down classes for a while, or how did that affect the university and him?

11:17 I don't remember that they shut down classes, but I do remember that they had all of their professors and teaching staff at the. At the school doing office hours for much longer, you know, every day, not just certain days a week, they were there every day so that students would be able to be. Would be able to have access to a professor if they needed anything. But really, the university kind of kept ticking. I mean, that was kind of the normal structure and foundation that the kids needed so that they felt some normalcy. Charlottesville was unusual because so many people fled D.C. and Charlottesville was one of the first stops that they would come to. So lots of people who lived in or very close to D.C. moved, some permanently, some temporarily to Charlottesville. So town just blew up in numbers. I mean, it was. It was very crowded.

12:35 So do you think it just depended on where you were, on how it affected businesses and stuff? Because if it was so crowded in Charlottesville, I'm guessing this is like they had to keep going. They had to keep doing all the things, so. And. But you were saying everybody wanted to stop, but it's like you couldn't. Does that make sense?

12:52 Yeah, it does. I think a lot of professional services slowed. You know, people just didn't know what to expect. And it. If they could cut back or if they could pause for a moment, they did, but they all came back, and they came back pretty quickly. But, I mean, the grocery stores did very well. You know, people. You know, people were going out to eat, but they weren't lingering places. They just didn't know what was coming next. So, you know, it's not like the pandemic where everybody just came home and sat inside for weeks on end. It was different. People were still around and they were still doing things, but it was just very uncertain.

13:52 How do you think that that has played into what it is today? Because, I mean, 9, 11 is something that we learn about every year, and we remember what happened. And, I mean, it's I mean, we've learned about how it's changed, like airport security and all the things like that. But I just. How, in your opinion, how do you think that it has changed the course of our history to where we are today versus maybe the outlook that we would have had if that were not to have happened?

14:22 I think that's kind of impossible to answer. I think it definitely turns the world on its axis and in a lot of the ways that war does. I can remember in the moments immediately following the attack, like that whole night or the rest of the day, that night and the next couple days, just watching all of the reports of what was going on and all that. I remember your dad saying, you're crazy. Everything is not going to change the way it did. And I just said, we're never going to be able to fly the same way. We're never going to be able to travel the same way. And we do travel just like we did before. There's just so many more checks in the process, which, you know, it's a good thing, it's a different world. But you know, just like World War II changed things so dramatically, women had not traditionally been in the workplace, and when the men went to war, women had to fill those shoes to make all of the things that kept America running. And then when all of the guys came back from war and wanted their jobs back, a lot of the women were like, hey, I like working. You know, it just changed the face of the American family and the economy, by the way that society changed during war. And I was nervous about that change, or I don't know if nervous or just nervous probably is the right word of how that was going to change with 9 11. And there are a lot of things that I think we changed for the better. I think we were too loose in our security. We, you know, we. We did some things in the extreme trying to keep ourselves safe, and we've seemed to have balanced that a bit. But it has changed a lot of the things about the way we fly, the way that our government communicates with other governments, the trust issues we have with the Middle east, how oil exports and imports are handled, and that greatly affects the economy. There's just a lot of, a lot of change that has resulted from that.

16:50 Yeah, a lot of change from any sort of event in history is always coming. But you talked a lot about how, where you were and all the things that happened when 9 11, when you heard about and everything. If you could go back in time and be there again. Is there Anything that you would change about your reaction to the event itself, like, for example, how you handled your money or like your assets as a result. Now knowing about how everything would just stop any loss on jobs and, or clients and things like that, because of.

17:23 It, we were super broke. So there's nothing about the way I would change the way we were handling our assets because our assets were like $10. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know what they were. But I mean, we just put your dad through graduate school and I had a full time job and he had a teaching job which, you know, didn't pay a ton. So we were making it and we were fine, but we didn't have anything extra. It's not like I would change the way we invested. I think the only thing I would change from that day is that I think I would have gone into work and checked in there for an hour or two and then gone home because I stayed at work because our boss felt like, you know, we should all just kind of, I don't know, not act like anything was happening is the right way to say it, but just, you know, try and have a normal work day. And I think we were all just in shock. And I think that if I had been able to go home and watch some of the news as it was happening, it would have helped in the following days because I felt like I was always behind. The news was changing so rapidly that. And there wasn't any analysis to it. It was just, this is happening now and now this is happening, happening, and now the towers have fallen and now the Pentagon has been. I mean, it just was so rapid and shocking that I think that if I could change anything, I would have gone home or gone to a sports bar or somewhere with a bunch of televisions where I could have watched it unfold so that I didn't feel so in the dark when I started watching it. Really, you know, eight hours later. Yeah.

19:24 Through the process of all of this, like, what do you think has been the biggest lesson that you've learned about yourself? Like as a result of how, of how you handled it in the moment versus how you looking back, how you would have handled it just in the general outlook of everything, how do you, what do you think you've learned about yourself?

19:49 I think maybe to go with, to trust my gut, like even then I knew I needed to take a moment away from everyone else's hysteria and just be able to size up what was happening and let it process for a few minutes before everybody was talking about it over a radio. I don't know if that's really what you're looking for, but, you know, I. I think at the moment, I didn't have anything to do but be patient with the process. And I think that was what we needed to do, especially as far as our firm went. We. We were forced into patience, and we just decided to keep the ship as steady as we could so that we could come out whole on the other side. And. And it took some time, but we were able to do that.

20:56 I mean, learning about. Learning that about yourself. What advice would you give to people like me, like, to young people and honestly, to anyone still alive today? Because as we're living through just time moving, we're gonna live through historical events. Like, what would you. What advice would you give to us living through this? Just to be patient and go through.

21:21 That, or I guess patience and realizing that you don't have to have all of the answers on the day that it happens. That it's going to take people. It's going to take people different amounts of time to process the same news. Just because you're able to process it in a certain amount of time doesn't mean that your neighbor or your boss or your client or whoever is going to need that same amount of time. So just allowing people to process things and as they need it. Yeah.

22:00 Well, thank you for coming and recording with me today, so.

22:04 You're welcome.