She was at Lewiston High School when it happened, a sophomore sitting in science class. Nine years later, Alexis Handy was in another Lewiston classroom when the weight of that day came home.

This time she was an educational technician working with seniors who needed help with English during a government class on Sept. 11.

“Huge epiphany,” said Handy, 25. “I just guess I didn’t realize how many people were affected. People in the towers, the responders. I just couldn’t fathom it. It was terrible and so sad.”

Ten years ago, she spent most of that day in the band room watching TV. She remembers that all after-school activities were canceled, except marching band. Some kids skipped. She didn’t.

Her best friend, Katie Lauze, was a freshman who’d been in debate class that morning. Her teacher told students, there’s something you ought to see. They followed her to the teachers’ lounge TV.

“I remember feeling confused, most of all,” Lauze, 24, said. “Why would someone fly a plane into a building?”

At field hockey camp the next summer, a college player from New York talked about being miles away on Long Island and smelling smoke from the attacks.

“It’s funny how all of a sudden that didn’t seem so far away,” Lauze said.

Handy, now a college class away from becoming an English teacher, said many of the students studying that Sept. 11 unit last fall were Somalis who’d moved to Maine in the years since.

“A lot of them quoted from the Quran, peaceful quotations,” Handy said. “A lot of their responses were, ‘The people who did this weren’t true Muslims.’”

Handy believes she might be more open-minded about people now, but it’s hard to say if that comes from Sept. 11 or from growing up.

“I’m more aware and I make sure I’m in the loop with the news,” she said.

Lauze, who works in chronic disease and substance abuse prevention for Healthy Androscoggin, said she doesn’t think she changed that day, but the community did, in a good way.

“There was more dialogue after Sept. 11 and (people in) the community came together to support one another,” she said. Some misconceptions about the city’s new arrivals, some tensions, were put to rest.

“I try not to let one occurrence affect me to my core,” Lauze said. “I think bad things happen.”

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