East Dallas Times

John Hulse addresses the Lakehill student body. — Courtesy Photo

By Bruce Felps

Voices in the Lakehill Preparatory School auditorium fell silent Sept. 9 as the sound system replayed audio from emergency radio transmissions and television broadcasts that aired originally Sept. 11, 2001.

The speakers echoed with urgent voices relaying information about planes striking the World Trade Center towers in New York and news anchors’ describing the shock and sorrow of New Yorkers on the streets.

The assembly took place to commemorate the attacks, remember a special assignment given by English teacher Evan Matthews, and how one student, John Hulse, a junior at the time, handled the assignment.

“The next day administration asked teachers to talk with the students about what happened,” Matthews told the student body. “Being an English teacher, I also had them write.”

Matthews assigned his students the task of writing letters to their 10-years-older selves.

“I told them to write what they feel, honestly and frankly. ‘No one will ever see it but you,’” he told the class. “‘Include the minutia, make it a time capsule, what are you wearing, who’s your favorite singer, your boyfriend or girlfriend, describe yourself in 10 years — what will be your job? Will you be married? Where will you live?’”

Matthews took the completed assignments, sealed them in separate envelopes, and waited 10 years to return the letters to the writers.

After reuniting former students with their letters, he — and Reid Parker, the school’s director of development and alumni coordinator — arranged for Hulse, now an English doctoral candidate at the University of Texas, to share parts of his letter with today’s Lakehill students.

Hulse talked of general recollections, of rumors about a single-engine plane striking the first tower and then escalating to four planes, then a dozen with targets spreading to the White House, Chicago, and Dallas.

Hulse then turned to his own letter.

He wrote of facial expressions changing from shock to grief to anger. He wrote of his mother, who was scheduled to be in New York the following week and Washington, D.C., the week after. He wrote of “how the New York skyline, one of the most recognizable in the world, lost its two front teeth,” finally, setting aside the letter, he talked of the therapeutic value of the assignment.

Coping sometimes comes in the form of an English assignment.