In 2001, a Kyle, TX teen interviewed NYC high school students impacted by 9/11. Those tapes are being archived by the Library of Congress.
When the terrorist attacks happened on September 11, 2001, Kyle, Texas native Joseph Fenity was 16 years old. He was a student at Buda’s Live Oak Academy, and he watched the day’s catastrophe take place on television, like so many of us did back then. As the news coverage continued, Fenity noticed it was primarily focused on adults.
Speaking with Fox San Antonio this month, Fenity said, “All I remember seeing at one point was just adults talking to other adults, you know, adult anchors talking to firefighters, talking to paramedics, talking to authority figures. And I didn’t see any kids. I didn’t see the youth.”
He decided he wanted to do something about this lack of coverage and spoke with administrators at Live Oak Academy, as well as the Hays Consolidated Independent School District (Hays CISD), about funding a trip to Manhattan. There, he would interview students at Stuyvesant High School, which was located in close proximity to the World Trade Center.
Fenity told KVUE, “I’m forever grateful that the leadership at Stuyvesant, who allowed a 16-year-old from Texas who had never even been to New York, to walk into their building.” He arrived with a microphone and camcorder and spent countless hours interviewing students about the 9/11 attacks. Most of them expressed different levels of fear they had walking through their beloved city in the aftermath of what happened.
Students at Stuyvesant described being afraid whenever they saw a plane fly overhead, and how they were concerned about the air quality even six months later, as the smoke from the World Trade Center poured into the surrounding area and made it tough for everyone to breathe. Many of the students also bore witness to the injured being treated at the school on the day of the tragedy itself.
The overarching thing that Fenity noticed, though, was their “resilience.” He said, “I found bravery. I found that you can get through anything no matter how horrible the tragedy. I was very impressed by the young people’s bravery and courage.” When he returned to Texas, Fenity compiled the interviews into a documentary film which he then released in 2002.
The tapes were eventually moved into a storage unit, but the COVID-19 pandemic gave Fenity time in 2021 to go through the tapes and digitize them in an effort to preserve the voices of those Stuyvesant High School students. As he did so, Fenity reflected on the differences between how the country was then versus how it is now.
He told Fox San Antonio, “America was not divided, at least not in the way that we’ve seen in more recent years — Banners were sent up from Texas to let this city and this country know that we’re all in it together.”
The Library of Congress will add Fenity’s tapes to its permanent archive
Joseph Fenity’s work was meaningful back in 2002, but it’s transforming into an additional honor now thanks to the Library of Congress. The library is located in Washington D.C. and serves as a historical archive for millions of objects. Ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, it reached out to Fenity to ask for his interview tapes with the Stuyvesant High School students.
Those tapes will be part of a larger special collection dedicated to honoring this milestone anniversary of the terrorist attack and will be archived permanently within the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center. Fenity is an independent writer and journalist now who lives in Los Angeles, California. He told Fox San Antonio that he was moved by the library’s request.
“That is something that a 16-year-old down in small-town Texas — I was just trying to get a good grade. I was just trying to get the voice out there — to have the Library of Congress express any interest in this — But it’s a true honor, that’s for sure,” he said.
His work is viewable to the public before it becomes adopted into the Library of Congress archives. To watch Fenity’s interview tapes with the students of Stuyvesant High School, visit josephfenity.com or 911tapes.org.
