School Tribute Honors Sept. 11 Victims

Six months to the day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Oxnard students dedicated a memorial Monday honoring the victims, including eight people who were en route to the Channel Islands when their hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon.

Thanks to the fund-raising efforts of students and staff members, the solemn monument erected in the lunch yard at Robert J. Frank Intermediate School turned out to be a grander affair than anyone anticipated.

It features a pair of black granite “towers” representing the fallen World Trade Center, bright red and blue benches, and a broad tipuana tree, all arranged inside a Pentagon-shaped expanse of concrete.

During a brief dedication ceremony attended by honor students, donors, flag-bearing Shriners and Oxnard political and education leaders, Principal Ron D’Incau explained the significance behind the structure’s design. Noting that the tired-looking “tipu” tree was in shock from being transplanted, “like our country [was] in shock on Sept. 11,” D’Incau told the audience not to worry.

“Its branches are going to spread out, and it will protect those of you sitting on the benches. It will protect the World Trade Center towers. It will come back, as we as a nation will,” D’Incau said.

As with many of the tributes around the nation since Sept. 11, the Frank school memorial stemmed from a personal connection to people who lost their lives in the attacks.

Two National Geographic staff members, as well as three 11-year-old students and three teachers from Washington, D.C., were among those killed aboard American Airlines Flight 77. All were on their way to an expedition on Santa Cruz Island, a trip that was supposed to include participants from Frank and two other Oxnard middle schools.

At a pre-dedication assembly Monday morning for the school’s 1,126 seventh- and eighth-graders, Learning Director Elaine Daughtery, who had served as National Geographic’s local contact for the trip, vividly recalled the tense hours she spent on Sept. 11 awaiting word on the fate of the island-bound travelers.

“We came to know they were all on that hijacked plane--that none of them were coming to California,” she said. “We would never meet them.”

Armay Roque, a Frank eighth-grader who was selected as her school’s student representative on the aborted field trip, read a series of haiku poems she wrote within days of the attacks. National Geographic has rescheduled the expedition for April 3-5, although no Washington-area students or teachers will be making the trip. Armay, however, who turned 14 on Monday, is already preparing for it.

“I feel more of an obligation to take part, given the fact that I’m lucky I will still be able to do it, while the people from Washington, D.C., won’t be going,” she said.

Members of the school’s Young Poets club recited an elegy written by teacher Dori Maria that attempted to put a human face on the crash of Flight 77. Filled with more than 1,000 squirmy adolescents, the normally noisy school gymnasium was silent as the students took turns reading.

The memorial was built with $1,000 in student-raised donations that went toward the purchase of the tree, as well as $15,000 worth of materials, labor and cash contributions from members of Oxnard’s construction industry.

John Labriola, who managed the project on behalf of Martinez Architects, described the structure as a collaborative effort. Its chief design was largely suggested by the school’s staff, then refined by his firm, he said.

“It was really a privilege to participate, even though I would rather it didn’t have to be built,” Labriola said.