Editor’s note: This is part of a continuing series of columns, stories and photos by Greenville County Historical Society examining the history of Greenville and the Upstate.
Do you remember where you were on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001? Most of us do.
We remember where we were on that Tuesday morning when we first heard that an airplane had struck the World Trade Center. We remember watching the second plane hit and realizing that what seemed like an accident was something far worse. For a few hours, New York and Washington felt distant yet frighteningly close.
In the days that followed, Greenville responded as communities across America did. We gave blood. The line outside The Blood Connection was, in Greenville News reporter Dan Hoover’s words, “long enough for a rock concert.” By 2 p.m. Wednesday, the center had collected 276 units. We raised candles at Greenville Braves Stadium, gathered for worship and flew flags. On Friday morning, American Legion Post 3 gave away three hundred of them at North Main and Academy streets.
Those acts mattered, but another part of Greenville’s response deserves to be remembered. On Friday, Sept. 14, 600 people filled Christ Episcopal Church and 800 more gathered at First Presbyterian.
Across town, the Greenville Islamic Society opened its doors and invited the community inside. Its 700 members had reason to be afraid. Mosques elsewhere were being vandalized. In Arizona, a Sikh man had been murdered by someone who mistook him for an Arab. Yet Greenville neighbors arrived carrying daisies and autumn mums. Many left their flowers outside, but at least 75 entered the mosque and remained for prayers – Christians and Jews sitting through a service in a language they did not understand.
Days earlier, the new pastor of First Baptist Church stood on City Hall Plaza and called any religious justification for the attacks “delusional and blasphemous.” In a city often described as the “Jewel in the Buckle of the Bible Belt,” religious leaders and citizens refused to confuse terrorists with neighbors who shared their faith.
Greenville had faced that choice before. Max Heller arrived here in 1938 as a Jewish teenager fleeing Hitler’s Vienna because a Greenville girl intervened for him. He later became mayor and helped rebuild Main Street. On Sept. 11, five of his grandchildren and grandsons-in-law were working in New York. He did not learn they were safe until mid-afternoon.
The unity did not last. But for a few days, Greenville remembered that frightened strangers were also neighbors. That compassion was real, and it was ours. That, too, is worth remembering.
Next: The building of the Poinsett Hotel and the push to bring visitors to Greenville.
Russell Stall is a Greenville native, former at-large Greenville City Council member, and certified city planner. He serves as executive director of the Greenville County Historical Society. For more information, visit greenvillehistory.org.
