Ed Malinowski strode out of Bancroft Hall on his way to class when he noticed a member of his company whose cheeks were damp with tears.
“My dad’s in the Pentagon, and there was just a report that a plane crashed into it,” Malinowski’s classmate told him.
“It’s not a big deal,” the Naval Academy football captain thought to himself, envisioning a small recreational aircraft that had simply gone down in the wrong place. When he reached his literature class, however, his professor had an overhead screen tuned to CNN. Malinowski watched live as the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in an unfathomable storm of smoke and dust.