Franks hugged his son goodbye and headed for Cary-Grove High School to give a talk about government. A plane struck the first tower while he was in the classroom.

He heard about it on the car radio while driving home to Woodstock, He and his wife, Debby, watched the rest unfold on their home TV.

"And then I see the second tower get smashed, and my blood started to boil," Franks said. "It was a very frightening time for me. I didn't know how our government was going to respond. We didn't know if there would be attacks in Chicago. I was concerned about what might happen."

Franks immediately started making calls to government offices to plan with others how the state, and specifically Chicago, should respond. He eventually headed into the state government office, but couldn't fully focus on the politics of the situation.

"My thoughts, a lot, were with our kids," he said.

Shortly after the attacks, one of his sons brought home an art project in which he had drawn the planes flying into the Twin Towers. Franks knew then that his sons' generation already had been influenced by the tragedy.

It was Ellyn Wrzeski's first year as superintendent. That morning she did what had to be done to both calm and coordinate a school district.

"Right away, we realized the severity of it as we realized this wasn't an accident," Wrzeski said.

Schools were locked down. Wrzeski had her own personal emotions, but things had to be done. Parents were concerned and calling. Teachers had to decide how much news to share. Students needed help coping.

"It just kept evolving," Wrzeski remembered. "It was just one of those days when you tried to do everything you needed to do to keep students safe, the staff informed, and to reassure parents the schools were safe ...

"I just remember it being something you never ever totally plan for. We have crisis plans, and they're very good and they've certainly gotten better over the last 10 years, but there's just so many things going through your mind."

Wrzeski had just been to the World Trade Center about three months earlier. She remembered looking out the windows while there.

"All I could visualize was being up in that restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center and just thinking of the horror those people must have felt," she said.

Sager was on his way to McHenry County College, where he teaches and, at the time, served as president of the faculty association.

He heard on news radio that the towers were going down.

"As everyone, I think there was a degree of disbelief," he said. "There was a degree of an absolute feeling of devastation and tragedy, and immediately my heart went out to the victims known and unknown."

Upon arriving at the college, he and other administrators met to determine how they'd respond as a college community.

Students were gathering around the TV outside the dining hall. Radios were tuned in to the news reports.

"I began to realize that this was going to have an impact upon all of our students and faculty and staff at the college, and we needed to be able to address this quickly," he said.

A Woodstock council member at the time and now mayor, Sager also thought of his community. He thought about questions of security, wanted to make sure that both the college and town were prepared.

"I would honestly have to say that those were secondary to dealing with the raw and stabbing emotional pain that everyone was feeling," he said.

Tryon's mother woke him up with a phone call that morning. He had spoken at a conference in Phoenix, Ariz., and was staying in a hotel there, where the time is two hours earlier.

"You need to turn on the TV," his mother told him. "I don't think you're coming [home] today."

He then watched as the second plane hit the tower.

"It was horrifying," he said. "You had a feeling this was going to lead to world conflict, and also being stranded away from my family with no way to get home. ... It was just this driving, gnawing desire to be home."

His mother was watching his children, but he knew they'd be worried and scared. Planes weren't flying. It took four days for Tryon to find a rental company that would allow him to take the car out of the state and begin his trek home.

"The drive home was one of the oddest things," he said. "One of the more interesting things about the drive home was the patriotism between Illinois and Phoenix and the number of cars with flags on them. Wherever you stopped, ... people were sitting around the television wanting to know what was going on.

"In my life, I have never experienced anything like that."

Nygren was half listening to the TV as he got ready for work that morning. He heard the news report about a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers.

"I thought, 'That's odd,'" he remembered.

As reports continued, he went along with the speculation that the crash was an accident. Then the second tower was struck. He immediately went into the sheriff's office.

"Everybody was just kind of stunned, and we made sure our people were aware of what was going on," he said. "There was a heightened sense of awareness and uncertainty for law enforcement."

Nygren met with court security officers "so we made sure we beefed up security at the courthouse," he said. No one knew if there were more targets.

"It was kind of a wait and see what happens," he said. "It was one of those days where Americans kind of lost their innocence."

After Sept. 11, the sheriff's office earned a grant to improve communication among fire and rescue, public works and other law enforcement agencies. Unlike 10 years ago, the agencies can now communication and share information with the "flick of a switch," he said.