Written by Zachary Biemer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo, a Geography Professor at SUNY Cortland since 1988, learned about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by chatting with one of her coworkers, Larry Ashley, while getting paperwork printed before class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anumonwo didn\u2019t know what was happening at first and just continued going about her day, teaching morning classes in cultural and social geography. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anumonwo explained that at first, everyone believed the first tower hit by a plane was just a major aviation accident, and at the time, no one understood what was happening. It wasn\u2019t until the second tower of the World Trade Center got attacked that people started to realize that aterrorist attack was happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anumonwo remembers that the students in the class she was teaching on that day were also not aware of what was occurring at the time because no one had cell phones back then and people were just going on about theirday like it was a normal Tuesday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anumonwo explains that many of the students, her coworkers and herself knew people who were in NYC at the time of the attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was distant because we are upstate, but we all knew someone in Manhattan,\u201d said Anumonwo. \u201cMy first cousin, their uncle, that’s where my anxiety went.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anumonwo remembers that seven of the people who passed away in the attacks that day graduated from SUNY Cortland years earlier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anumonwo had a student years earlier who was working on Wall Street during the attacks, who she was worried about because she knew he was there when the attacks happened, however he turned out to be okay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anumonwo also recalled believing that her friend, Susan Hansen, a well-known geographer, was among the passengers of the plane that crashed on the ground in PA.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/em>\u201cIt seemed as if the famous geographer Susan Hansenwas on one of the planes. Oh my goodness. She\u2019s my advisor. She’s my advisor from class,\u201d said Anumonwo. \u201cI think of her as like my mother. [But] it wasn’t her. It was just a coincidence; it was a different Susan Hansen who had died on the plane.\u201d <\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by Zachary Biemer Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo, a Geography Professor at SUNY Cortland since 1988, learned about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by chatting with one of her coworkers, Larry Ashley, while getting paperwork printed before class. Anumonwo didn\u2019t know what was happening at first and just continued going about her day, teaching morning classes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251,"featured_media":10578,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","entry"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2026\/07\/ChatGPT-Image-Jul-28-2026-at-01_28_42-PM-600x400.png","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2026\/07\/ChatGPT-Image-Jul-28-2026-at-01_28_42-PM-600x600.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Special Contribution to the Dragon Chronicle","author_link":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/author\/paul-arras\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/251"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cortland.edu\/dragon-chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}