Olivia Brooks reflects on what it's like to be born the same day as the worst terrorist attack in recent U.S. history. The East Limestone High School junior was born Sept. 11, 2001, shortly after the South Tower of the World Trade Center crumbled to the ground.

East Limestone resident Robin Brooks was in the final stages of labor with her daughter Olivia when she begged her husband, Warren Brooks, to find someone to give her an epidural.

When Warren stepped out of the room to find a nurse or doctor to help his wife, to his shock he found the hallways of the usually busy Ireland Army Hospital in Fort Knox, Kentucky, were empty. Unbeknownst to the couple, the majority of the facility had been evacuated in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, coordinated terrorist attack on American soil that would claim the lives of 2,996 people.

Warren returned to his wife’s room.

“At first, when he came back in, he lied to me and said someone was coming because he didn’t want to scare me,” Robin said. “But in reality, there was no one there. It wasn’t until after the evacuation that Warren was able to find a nurse who told him about the attacks.”

Once Robin received her much needed-epidural, the couple switched on the TV just in time to watch Al Qaeda terrorists slam a second airplane into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

“I was so disturbed by what we were seeing, I told him to turn it off,” she said. “I just knew as a military family that in that moment our entire lives were going to change.”

Then her midwife stepped in, assuring Robin that despite everything that was going on around them it was going to be a good day because they were having a baby.

Olivia was born at 12:28 p.m. without complications, exactly 2 1/2 hours after the South Tower collapsed.

Just as Robin had predicted, 16 months after Olivia arrived, Warren was deployed to Iraq for the first of three tours. Shortly after his first tour, the family was transferred to a military base in Vilseck, Germany.

Living in a foreign county helped shield the young Olivia from much of the wall-to-wall news coverage that takes place on the anniversary of 9/11, but the family eventually moved back to the states when Olivia was 8, settling in East Limestone.

It was then that she started hearing about what happened on 9/11 and started asking her parents questions.

“At first it upset me because as a child you don’t understand, and I felt bad celebrating my birthday on the same day that caused pain to so many others,” she said.

In anticipation of the day her daughter would figure out her birthdate coincided with the worst terrorist attack in recent U.S. history, Robin saved newspaper articles, books and photos from 9/11 to share with Olivia.

“Now when I celebrate my birthday, I try not to think of the terrible things that happened but of all the good things that came out of it,” Olivia said. “Like how we came together as a nation to try get over it and how people were so ready to help each other.”

This year, Olivia, who hopes to be a neonatal nurse one day, kept her birthday low-key. She invited a group of friends for dinner and a slice of strawberry birthday cake. Afterward, they all hung out in her loft bedroom.

“As I get older, I realize that me being born on that day was a symbol of hope for our family that something as miraculous as a birth could happen during such an awful time.”