MT. WASHINGTON, Ky. (WDRB) -- When you're grown, it can be hard to remember the lessons that shape who you become. The days when you strolled around school, half your current height. When innocence was a way of life, and you were clueless on how to spell it.
"It was a time of no worries," Brandi Doyle said.
"Everybody's happy," Maryanna Brewer added.
At the beginning of the 2001 school year at Old Mill Elementary School, time sort of stood still for Doyle and Brewer.
"A lot of people's lives were changed," Brewer said.
"It hit home for every single person," Doyle said. "No one knew how to act. It was almost like, 'What just happened?'"
Doyle and Brewer never knew what became of the letters they wrote in 2nd grade until a post popped up on Facebook. A Kentucky woman snapped pictures of the letters.
That is what Sept. 11 looked like to a pair of Kentucky 7-year-olds.
"Just thinking about it, it really hurts," Doyle said. "You can definitely still feel it this many years later."
Their teacher all those years ago had an idea.
"Miss Pippen was like, 'There's people that are hurting, and I think it would be great to heal them a little bit with some kind words," Doyle said.
They put pencil to paper, trying to comfort the hurting and those trying to treat them.
"I remember writing that," Doyle said.
As the long road to healing began and 9/11 entered history books, the thought of the letters seemed to fade. That is until a post showed up on social media, a couple months ago.
"Whenever I was tagged in that post on Facebook, I was like, 'Wow,'" Doyle said.
A Kentucky woman at New York Presbyterian Hospital, with a loved one, snapped pictures of the 9/11 letters from Doyle, Brewer and their classmates, still up on the walls.
"I think that's just incredible," Brewer said. "It's amazing that after 21 years, it's still standing there."
One of the doctors who was there on 9/11 is happy they are.
"We pasted them from floor to ceiling (in the days after the terror attack). It was amazing," said Dr. Palmer Bessey, who worked in the burn unit then. "We got all of the large, really most serious burns."
The children's words showed that every American was rooting for him and his patients.
"The letters and the notes were all written beautifully," Bessey said. "It was everybody's tragedy."
For Doyle and Brewer in 2022, a heartfelt message from the 9/11 doctor:
"I just want to say thank you so much for doing that," Bessey said.
Crystal Adams is the Kentucky woman who snapped those pictures of the 9/11 letters. She said she's so happy the words are still valued today and that she was able to connect Bessey with Doyle and Brewer.
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