by Ansley Small
“Since I play three sports, it keeps me busy year round, so I never have time to get into something I shouldn’t be doing. Sports help me keep my head on straight, and teaches me life lessons, like if you fail it’s not over, and you still have more chances. My favorite sport that I play out of the three is volleyball right now. I'm on a travel team right now. But which one I like the most depends on the season I'm in. Although I love playing ball, it can be tough to manage school and my friends with limited time. Whenever I’m at school I try my best to get all my work done there so I won’t have anything to do when I get home, since it’s usually late when I get home from practice. School work is top priority to me, so if I don’t get it done at school, I do my best to get it done that night or the next morning. Other than school, I usually see my friends on the weekend like Saturday or Sunday if I don’t have practice. Sports keeps me motivated, and it gives me something to look forward to. A piece of advice I would give to a student that is wanting to be or is a multi-sport athlete is that although sports can be time consuming, you still have time for any other sports or a social life. Don’t hold yourself back because you think you “won’t have time”, coaches are more lenient with their schedule than you think, and even if you miss out on friend/family outings, it’s worth it because you’re doing something you love.”
by Bryce Bridges
“I would like to be a chef. I would like to be a chef because ever since I was a little kid I've always loved cooking and being in the kitchen and I guess I've just had a passion for it ever since I was young. Sometimes yes, I do use recipes. Most of the time I do like to freehand and combine recipes but my favorite recipe might be chicken parm, I just love that dish and I love making homemade noodles.I learned most of it by myself. I look at a lot of recipes but my father has taught me a lot of different recipes. I would say what influenced me is my dad and my great grandma are great and they influenced me because they are very special. I was always in the kitchen with them and they're always talking about cooking with me and they were just generally really good cooks and I just loved it. I make mistakes all the time. But you know that's part of the process of cooking and learning. Without mistakes, you can't learn anything because you learned what not to do and what to do. I would like to cook in a fancy restaurant like up in Charlotte somewhere out there. Because that's where the money's at, you know, and I like finer cuisine and stuff like that.”
by Tabytha Thompson
“Well, it is my daughter's birthday on Saturday. So we are going to take her to Adventure Air Sports? Whatever it’s called, and we're going to do some bouncing with some of her friends and have a cake and do the whole birthday thing. It'll be a good time. She is, well she will be nine. When I lost my grandfather, it was pretty hard on me. I was in the middle of college, and I had to leave and I had to make up my exams on top of the fact that I was still grieving. And then I went through depression, and it was hard to climb back up. It showed me that I had support. There's no way I could have gotten through all of that without my family and my friends being there to help me get back to who I was. So that's one thing that I think that it showed me the power of good people in your life. And I think it helped change my life, because it showed me that I wanted to be one of those good people, that when things go wrong for other people, I want to be the one that helps them get through their hardships. Well, I mean, I just want her (his daughter) to be a good person to, hopefully, that my actions, especially since it was my grandfather, you know, I'm passing down the same ideals and things that he stood for down to her as well. My grandfather was also a teacher and it means a lot to me to be able to pass on those experiences and the knowledge of how to do school down to her so that she can be successful as well. I mean, the thing is, you know, nobody told me or nobody asked me to be a teacher, you know? It's just when you grow up in the environment, and you understand, you know, the values that your family has and how it lines up with what you want to give to the world. This was just one of the main avenues to do it. It just seemed like the right move for myself, and I imagined for them, it was a similar choice when they chose to become a teacher. It's the place where I can make the most impact I feel like on people who are going to make an impact on our community. So my thing has always been, you know, I want to improve my community, my neighbors, the people around me. Making sure that the next generation is better than the one that preceded it is my mission in life. It’s what I do.”
by Rylie Beckham
“ In the future, I want to go to vet school and get my D.V.M. From what I know, to prepare for it I need to just do a bunch of science and math classes. So far I’ve taken chemistry and math classes that I just love so much, which I don’t. I’m both excited and nervous to start vet school, honestly. At first, I wanted to join a vet business and then move on to start my own. I’ll name my business, ‘Helm’s Animal Hospital.’ It’ll be for both large and small animals. ”
by Taylor Greene
"I like to read. Reading is my favorite thing to do, which is fun because my office is right here in the library. I read a lot on my kindle, although I prefer hardcover books but it is cheaper on the kindle. I like to go hunting with my fiance a lot, that's also a lot of fun. Music is probably my favorite thing. I am actually going to a Jordan Davis concert tonight, I love him. And Morgan wallen, and Luke Combs, obviously.
I wasn't going to do this, I was trying to stay away from the school district because this is also what my mom did. And it is not so much as I didn't want to follow in her footsteps, it is more of I wanted to make something of my own. Now that I have been here for two weeks, I plan to stay here.
I really like BHS a lot. A lot of the students are fun, and very funny. I love the people that I work with though. I feel a lot better here than I did at my previous career. After my two years is up, I want to come back here and be a teacher for a while, and maybe even get up to being an admin.
I have no doubt that I made the right choice coming to BHS. I already love it here. I loved it here the first day. Everybody’s really great. I love it. "
by Ansley Small
“My dad is from Mexico. We have lots of family there. I see my family in Mexico once a year, at Christmas time. We stay down there for about three weeks. It’s a very long drive, like three or four days. My most favorite part about going to Mexico is seeing family and spending time with them. We don’t go out much when we are there, but sometimes we’ll go to parties. We mainly just focus on spending as much time as we can with our family. One of the most memorable times is when we cooked and then ate a goat, and it was pretty good. The environment down there is so much happier and light hearted than where we live, the people in Mexico are nicer and more talkative. The houses down there are so much different than ours; they have doors made out of metal, and their houses are made out of cement. When I get older I’m thinking about moving down there. My plan is to work up here in the U.S. for a while and then save up so I can start a business in Mexico.”
by Rylie Beckham
by Makaylah Oakley
“I remember watching it on television in Hineston, LA after my husband had called me and told me to turn on the TV and watched it on a continuous loop showing the airplane going into the towers and the towers falling. I remember just sitting beside my daughter’s crib and just crying and holding her and just praying for all those people that were trapped. It was heartbreaking. There were thousands and thousands of people that died that day and I remember watching the videos of the firemen and police officers pulling bodies out of the rubble. I think a lot of it made a lot of people wake up and realize we’re vulnerable .I think we probably have better security [now].Airlines now, they've gotten a lot stricter with TSA and renting cars and any kind of rentals or that sort of thing.Those firemen and police officers that passed away that day, they ran into a falling building and didn’t come home. They will always be remembered as heroes.”
"They went on full lockdown. I was working in Fayetteville, North Carolina, I was a youth director at a church. Fayetteville, North Carolina is right near Fort Bragg, which is now called Fort Liberty, but it was the home of the 82nd Airborne Special Operations. That morning we had a church full of mothers of preschoolers at their weekly meeting and all their husbands were in the military. It became kind of like an instant support group–like the whole church became an instant support group, because a third to half of our church population is all of the sudden locked down on their way to war. It's kind of a sobering thing when a very busy city, a busy military installation like that goes quiet. Of course, I saw the pictures of New York and the Pentagon, but for me, the reality of the situation really hit home because it was my friends and my neighbors who went to work that day, just a normal work day, and didn’t get to come home for three or four months."
“I was in my 11th grade government and economics class, and my principal at the time came over the intercom, and told all the teachers to turn on your TV’s. The World Trade Center just got hit by a plane. I honestly didn’t even know what the World Trade Center was, I turned back to my buddy and said, ‘What is that, why does it even matter?’ We watched the second plane hit, and we soon realized what was happening. It was an eerie feeling. The whole world was quiet; it was just very weird. I remember walking home from the bus. It felt like there were no birds chirping or noise of cars going by– just a bad feeling. I felt like it was the end of the world. We had absolutely no idea of what would happen next. I thought maybe we would go to war, but we just had no clue and that was terrifying. It brought our country closer together, if anything. Everyone helped each other through this, and made us aware of what can happen when our guard is down. It’s so important we remember this day because of what our country went through. Innocent people lost their lives. People lost their husband, wife, kids, friends, and family members. The firefighters went into the building knowing that there was an eighty-percent chance that they weren’t gonna make it out alive, but they had to– it was their job. I hope we never forget and our country continues to remember this day for what it is.”
“I was in college class, I think It was psychology. I was at Central Piedmont Community College in Huntersville. I was too immature at the time to understand what was going on. I feel as though the world had great unity after the attack. Everyone was really sad that anyone would think about killing that many people or have the mind to do it. I will always remember to check on my loved ones and don't take anything for granted.”
"I was 44 years old when 9/11 happened. I remember I was working and one of our new girls came in and screamed that the Towers had been attacked. To this day I still remember the fear, dread, and confusion that ran through me when I heard that. Everyone turned on the news and just watched all the destruction unfold right there on the screen. Firefighters kept going back into the Towers to save people not really realizing how bad the destruction was. Nobody would have predicted this. Because of that, people kind of lost their faith in America because a hostage situation caused something so disastrous resulting in the loss of nearly 3,000 lives."
“I remember I was getting ready for school, because I was only in college at the time. And my brother called me, told me to look at the TV. I saw the second tower get hit live, and my husband who wasn't my husband yet in 2001 was calling me and telling me not to go to work since it was a large corporation in Charlotte. After 9/11, America was filled with a lot of fear really, and just a lot of uncertainty. There was a lot of talk about war and nobody knew what was going to happen.”
“I was in Corpus Christi, Texas, visiting my mom and dad on that day, and I was boarding a plane at the airport to head back to Florida where I lived at the time. We taxied and was heading towards the runway when the plane stopped. The captain said, you know that they had to essentially hold for a period of time. Maybe in about 30 minutes, the captain indicated that they needed to start to head back towards the gate but didn't really tell us why. We got back to the gate set for maybe 10 minutes and then the captain came back on and indicated we needed to deboard it. We walked off the plane, got into the lobby of the terminal where we were able to look at a video or a TV monitor and saw both towers on fire. Both planes had already hit and I actually was there about the time when the first tower fell. I saw the first tower fall on the TV. About that time my mom called me and asked me where I was at. I told her that we didn't take off. She now knew about what was going on. She came and picked me up at the airport and took me back to their house. I did what I essentially needed to do in order to get back to Florida because all flights were grounded. I ended up finding a rental car, not in Corpus Christi where I was at, but all the way in Houston, Texas. Found one of the last rental cars there, rented that and drove home. Probably the biggest emotion was anger, anger and probably another one was revenge. You know, it was something to where I wanted those responsible for whoever did this all in our government to basically take them out, find them, take them out, deal with them in any which way possible. There was a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, a lot of revenge, but also hurt and very sorry, sorry for all those that needlessly lost their lives. Both in New York, in the field in Pennsylvania and then also the Pentagon. The country came together, which was great to see. Unfortunately, we don't do that anymore. But the country came together and rallied around our administration, our president, President Bush, and we were all basically yelling ‘USA’ at the top of our lungs. There was a sense of togetherness, a sense of we're in this together and that we're going to work together in order to try to build back what was fallen when the towers fell. It's important because you can never take things for granted. Nobody is in their right mind. I mean, no one could have ever envisioned that day happening. I will remember it for forever and everybody that was living during that time, will remember it forever. We don't forget things like this because it's important to always remember those that lost their life, the innocent people that lost their lives. It’s also important that we never let our guard down. Because there are people in this world for whatever reason, hates us, hates our values, hates the way we live, hates everything about this country. And on that day, though, they won for a short period of time, but we need to remember and stay vigilant, stay on course and make sure that we never forget. We remember and we do whatever is in our power to make sure that those types of events never happen again.”
“I was in the seventh grade. My class wasn’t told about it until after lunch we was in history, Miss Failes’ history class at the middle school. She just kind of nonchalantly mentioned that y’all hear about the attack on the World Trade Center? And we had one kid in our class named Justin who he was from New York. We all kind of turned and looked at him and that was pretty much the end of that discussion. We just moved on with the rest of the day. I mean, at the time, we didn’t, really know what the World Trade Center was. It had no real important significance to me about what it was. I said it was kind of a nonchalant thing. They kind of told to us ‘Oh, hey, this happened.’ Okay. You just kept right on going on. When we got home I had a great aunt and uncle who was a pilot and flight attendant. I can’t remember if it was American Airlines or United who they flew with, so it was kind of a bit of mom and him running around trying to figure out was it one of their planes they was on or if they was okay, or what that was? But they ended up being okay. They weren’t on any of those flights, but they was on a flight that ended up getting grounded. So as far as that was concerned, everything was alright from that point of view. The days after it was very somber mood in the following days on the country– really kind of come to a halt. Planes didn’t really fly for a few days, sports across the country got canceled for a few days. It was a real togetherness the country hadn’t seen since then. I think it’s important to remember just to serve as a reminder that the world changed–September 10 was a completely different time to what September 12 was in 2001. The world as we know it changed forever. It’s important to remember those days, and really to remember how we came together as a country and how we looked out for one another.”
“I was at work, I worked at Omnova Solutions at the time. When it happened, I was really scared. I honestly thought we were going to war. It was a lot of sadness and worry. The country afterwards, like I said, was very sad. But the country wasn’t divided anymore it seemed like. It didn’t matter what color or religion you were anymore. It’s important to remember because a lot of people died. Now we have the right kind of protection so it doesn’t happen again.”
"I was in the ninth grade English class and in Miss. Mills’ class. A lot of people were the same way. It's like disbelief, I guess because you never thought something like that would happen but then at the same time, I'm sympathetic for all the same for all the people who lost their lives. I think everybody kind of came together as Americans all standing together and people were coming closer that may or may not have been that close before. I think it's one of the things where you always feel protected in America, but there’s a reason why we have the military who will have certain things in place is to protect us on our home soil, and that you don't forget that so it doesn’t happen again. "