TROY, Ala. (TROJANVISION) — Although many college students weren’t even born when the attacks happened, that doesn’t mean their professors and instructors don’t remember that day.

September 11, 2001 is the day the Twin Towers in New York were hit by terrorists. Assistant professor for the Hall School of Journalism and Communication (HSJC) Stefanie East was working in the news industry when the strike happened.

“I was a young reporter working in Dothan, Alabama at WTVY,” East said. “I was getting ready for work that morning and my mother called me and said turn on the television, somebody flew a plane into the World Trade Center. I watched it as I got ready for work knowing this this was the biggest story that had ever happened.

I drove to work and, of course, we watched it in the newsroom and had a discussion of how we would localize the story. Even though it was happening in New York, we needed to do a local angle for us. I went down to Fort Rucker to do a story on how it impacted the military who were training to be helicopter pilots.”

Dr. Robbyn Taylor ,whose birthday falls on the day of the attacks, was home when she heard the news.

“It was my birthday day so I had taken the day off,” Taylor explained. “I worked as a journalist in Montgomery at WSFA and went home to Andalusia. I had not even turned the television on that morning. I came in the house and the phone was just ringing off the hook. I answered it and my mom was teaching at a school and she called and she was like ‘you got to turn the TV on’ so I turned it on just in time to see the plane hit the second tower.”

According to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, the attacks left 2,977 dead across New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania.