Student Highlights

Remembering Sept. 12, 2001

Last summer John “J.D.” Dolan ’07 got a surprise—he found himself pictured on the cover of his own textbook.

The story of how that came to be started on Sept. 12, 2001. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Dolan’s high school in Bethesda, Md., was closed because the school shared a fence with the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency, a potential terrorist target. Dolan was a high-school junior who felt, as many did, that he needed to do something to help. So he and a few friends went to Washington, D.C.

“There was no one downtown,” he says. “There was no one outside of the White House and no one on the [National] Mall. Our parents were a little nervous about us going into the city, but we knew we had to do something.”

Dolan and his friends had a simple mission—to wave a U.S. flag.

Soon the press noticed. TV and print reporters interviewed them, and photojournalists snapped hundreds of pictures. The boys and their flag ended up all over the news. One photograph of Dolan, with his name in the caption, landed on the AOL main page.

Time went by. Dolan forgot about the pictures, but he didn’t forget about the feeling he had during those days—his desire to help the country. He came to Dickinson as an Army ROTC student.

Last year he took American Government 101, and it wasn’t until he took the course textbook home that his father pointed out the obvious: Dolan’s picture, the same one that had been featured on the AOL main page, was on the cover.

“I just didn’t notice it,” he says, shaking his head at the irony. “I hadn’t seen the picture since 2001. We were interviewed and photographed a lot back then, but the news coverage wasn’t our primary concern. A few days later we were asked to lead the candlelight vigil at the Reflecting Pool. We carried the flags. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”