By He left his home on 4th and Cherry, and heard the breaking news on the radio as he drove up Ximeno to get to school.
He expected to go through his usual routine of snacking on a muffin and drinking chocolate milk while reading the newspaper. But on that Tuesday, the routine was replaced with a day that would be embedded in his memory.
Wayne Stickney was president of Associated Students, Inc. at Cal State Long Beach from 2001-02 he knew that once he reached campus, he would be doing more than grieving.
“[There] was just this really unsettling feeling,” Stickney recalled. “We weren’t sure what we were doing…[Campus administration] was thinking of shutting down and having everybody go home. We weren’t sure if there were going to be more attacks.”
Stickney and his ASI staff ended up staying at school until around 10 p.m.
He said he remembers connecting with a group of students whom he helped make posters saying “Campus closed, go home”, and they placed them all around campus.
“We were just trying to do our small part to help,” Stickney said. “That was a really touching day.”
After making posters and ushering an entire parking lot full of students and faculty, Stickney, along with his staff and campus administration, worked on planning a town hall meeting that took place inside the University Student Union’s small auditorium the next day.
Stickney believed that a lot of campuses had gone through similar processes as people on campus wept and were filled with fear and anger.
“What you see on a college campus, when you see a strife like that, [everyone] tries to respond as a community and rally around a tragedy,” Stickney said after a deep breath. “As a community, we want to get together and make sense of things.”
Although he doesn’t remember how life transitioned after the tragedy that took over 3,000 lives, he said he knows that life went on.
After Stickney graduated in 2002, he visited New York before then heading to Europe.
“America is such a resilient group of people. You carry on. And it’s such a sad situation, but you have to carry on.”
