Since the terrorist attacks last year, Willie Wilson has had an attitude change. The Renegade football player said he doesn’t judge other cultures now and is “more friendly to every culture.”
Wilson said he had been in an environment where people believed that differences among cultures were strange. But that changed on Sept. 11.
“We all should come together,” he said.
Wilson recalled how 9/11 changed his life during the Bakersfield Unites For the Stars and Stripes event at the Marketplace Sunday.
Seeing volunteers help with devastation at Ground Zero helped Viki Roberts, 53, have faith in the goodness of people again.
She said she noticed how much people “banded together more” in times of tragedy.
BC student Donnie Chase, 18, described the attacks as a “shock.”
“It made me appreciate life more,” he said. “It slapped me in the face about living for God … (because) this is how things are going to go down in the future.”
Lisa Shaffer, 16, also said she takes things more seriously now.
“I didn’t think about other countries having conflicts with us,” she says. The reality of America having hostile enemies is definitely something she thinks about now, she said.