School Kids Looked Bush in the Eye on 9/11

Sept. 10, 2006— -- On Sept. 11, 2001, when then-fifth-grader Mike Andrews heard President Bush was coming to his school, Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., he could hardly believe it.

"I just thought it was unreal," said Andrews, now a 15-year-old student at Booker High School. "All of us, we just looked at each other. We were like, 'Are you serious? Like he's actually coming here just for us?' Like, of all the places in the nation he could have went to and he came here. Like, all the way just to Sarasota."

Thirteen-year-old Booker Middle School student Tyler Radkey was in second grade at the time, and didn't really think the president would come. When he saw Bush, he felt like he was going to faint.

"I thought it was going to be a lie, and they were just trying to get us excited," Radkey said.

The president visited the students' classroom to promote his education bill. But then, at 9:07 a.m., White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card interrupted the class.

"I just remember one of his staff members walk up to him, and he turns back and looks at us, and his face starts to turn red," Radkey said. "So I'm thinking to myself that he has to go to the bathroom."

Another student in that classroom, 12-year-old Natalia Jones, who's now a seventh grader at Booker Middle School had a different take.

"I thought he was mad at us or something because his face was red and he was staring in one spot," Jones said.

In fact, with that quick whisper, the world was changed forever. The president had just been told a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. America was under attack.

Bush finished the class before making a brief stop in a nearby staff room to speak with his national security advisor.

Andrews clearly remembers when he first realized that something awful had happened that morning.