GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM Hawaii Baptist Academy ninth-graders Stacie Sueda and Cassandra Wong showed off a mosaic yesterday produced by thousands of cut pieces of paper. The two, working with other honor society students, took nearly a year to complete the final product.

Hawaii Baptist
students make
Sept. 11 mural

The 10-month project helped
teenagers deal with emotional
turmoil following the attacks

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By Genevieve A. Suzuki
gsuzuki@starbulletin.com

Hawaii Baptist Academy student Cassandra Wong hated the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Fellow student Stacie Sueda said, "I thought I was still dreaming when I heard about it (the terrorist attacks)."

Together, the students used their emotional turmoil about the events of Sept. 11 to transform a school beautification project into a mosaic and permanent reminder.

Wong said: "We kind of just put all our emotions together and showed how the school cares."

After 10 months of work - the mural was unveiled to the public yesterday - more than 30 students put up hundreds of little red, white and blue squares surrounding an array of other colors in the form of an eagle set against the U.S. flag.

The students chose an eagle because it is Hawaii Baptist Academy's mascot, and the U.S. flag in memory of Sept. 11, Wong said.

They sacrificed lunchtimes to work on the 6-foot-long, 4-foot-high mural, said Wong, the chair of the committee.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the school was prepared to administer SATs, said Debra Tenney, an English teacher at HBA in Nuuanu.

Teachers instead discussed the attacks with their students, she said.

Tenney, also Wong and Sueda's National Junior Honor Society adviser, said she remembers telling her students: "This is the wake-up call, guys. We need to pray for our country. We've really got to be thinking about what we're doing with our lives. We're spoiled."

The honor society students realized they should do something in remembrance of the attacks, said Wong.

The students began by scouring magazines and calendars for photos of Arabs and Afghanistan. "We wanted pictures that were related to the incident," Wong said.

The eagle's body includes photographs of Afghan people and drawings of George Washington and Jesus Christ, an homage to the school's Christian foundation.

The students also glued photocopies of their class photos to the flag's stripes.

The project cost just $130 to complete because Tenney said a member of her Kailua church framed the mural for free.

The mural was unveiled at an Aug. 20 school assembly. Tenney said she was surprised at how much attention the project is receiving.

The school is mounting the mural on Sept. 11 in the Bessie Flemming building in the center of HBA's campus.

"I don't think any of us thought it was going to be a big deal," Tenney said. "We used to call it 'the little poster thing.'"

"We were kind of surprised that we accomplished it because I do a lot of stuff without finishing it," Wong said.