(U-WIRE) ITHACA, N.Y. ÷ Sept. 11 is a special day Jon Rothstein and his grandmother will always share.

It's their birthday.

Rothstein, an Ithaca College sophomore, started his day off a year ago with a call to his grandma to say "Happy Birthday." He then went to his usual 9:25 a.m. class with no idea that the day would hold a special significance for anyone else.

But then, Rothstein said, "A kid came in late [to class] and he said, "Did you hear a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center?"

The professor continued the class, Rothstein said, and "I couldn't really fathom what was going on," he recalled.

On another hill, another birthday was beginning. Maeve Gallagher sat down for her shift at the Straight ticket desk, when her boss came in and announced news of the terrorist attacks. They turned on the radio to listen.

"Peter Jennings stopped talking when one of the towers fell," Gallagher recalled. She was startled because "news people, they don't stop talking."

Rothstein spent the morning trying to get ahold of his cousin, who worked in New York City.

"Once I found out the people I cared about were safe, I remembered, ÎToday's my birthday,'" he said.

As the day went on, he tried angrily to understand the personal significance of what had happened. "I just kept saying to people, ÎWhy? Why? Why does my birthday have to be ruined forever? Why my first year in college?'"

Gallagher's friends and family didn't know what to say when they called to wish her a happy birthday, she remembered.

"On birthday cards I got after the fact," she observed, "No one would write the date."