September 11: Remembering What United Us

There are very few moments in life when you remember exactly where you were.

Twenty-five years ago today, I got a phone call from a friend telling me a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I turned on the TV, and as the picture came into focus, my first thought was: how could anyone not see towers that tall? I assumed it had to be a terrible accident.

Then, moments later, I watched the second plane hit live.

The news channel cut back to the studio, but the anchors were no longer at their desks. Everyone was in shock. And in that moment, we knew America was under attack.

I had never felt fear like that before. I had just turned 21 years old.

Now, 25 years later, September 11 has become to this generation what Pearl Harbor was to mine: not a memory, but history.

Roughly 100 million Americans alive today were either not yet born or were too young to remember September 11 firsthand. For them, it is something learned in classrooms, summarized in textbooks, shown in documentaries and explained by people who may not have experienced that day themselves.

And that matters.

Because once a defining moment passes from living memory into history, how we tell that story becomes almost as important as remembering that it happened.

The facts of September 11 matter. The nearly 3,000 lives lost matter. The evil behind the attacks matters.

But so does the extraordinary courage we witnessed that day.

There was FDNY Chief of Department Peter J. Ganci Jr., who continued directing rescue efforts at the World Trade Center and was killed when the North Tower collapsed.

There was FDNY firefighter Stephen Siller, who had finished his shift but turned back when he learned what was happening, carrying his gear toward Lower Manhattan to help.

There was NYPD Officer John Perry, who was off duty and nearing retirement but responded anyway.

There was NYPD Officer Moira Smith, who helped evacuate people from the World Trade Center before she was killed when the South Tower collapsed.

And then there was Welles Crowther.

Most people would come to know him simply as “The Man in the Red Bandana.”

Crowther was only 24 years old. He worked as an equities trader in the South Tower and had been a volunteer firefighter since he was a teenager.

After the plane struck, survivors remembered a young man with a red bandana covering his face emerging through the smoke and chaos.

Instead of trying only to save himself, Crowther kept going back.

He helped the injured, directed survivors toward safety, carried a woman toward an escape route and repeatedly returned to help others before the tower collapsed.

He never made it out.

He did not have to do any of it.

Neither did Ganci.

Neither did Siller.

Neither did Perry or Smith.

Yet when confronted with unimaginable danger, their instinct was not to run away from people who needed help. It was to run toward them.

That is part of the story of September 11 that can never be allowed to fade into a paragraph in a history book.

And there were thousands more.

Firefighters climbing stairs while everyone else was coming down. Police officers directing terrified people toward safety. Paramedics, Port Authority officers, office workers and complete strangers helping people they had never met.

On one of the darkest days in American history, we witnessed some of the very best of humanity.

But what has stayed with me just as much is what happened across the rest of the country.

For the first time in my life, I can truly say it felt like all of America experienced the same significant moment at the same time.

We have all lived through earthquakes, hurricanes, fires and other tragedies. People in other parts of the country see them on television, say a prayer, send support and genuinely care. But eventually, in most cases, they return to the rhythm of their own day.

Not because they are cold.

Not because they do not care.

But because the tragedy did not reach into their lives and stop everything.

September 11 did.

It broke the rhythm of an entire nation.

People stopped working. Schools stopped feeling normal. Families called one another. Strangers gathered around televisions. Streets felt different. Airports shut down. Sporting events were canceled. Conversations everywhere suddenly became about the same thing.

There was no escaping into the ordinary routine of the day.

Everyone was watching.

Everyone was processing it.

Everyone was asking the same questions.

Everyone felt vulnerable.

For a moment, an entire country was living through the same piece of history together.

I had never experienced anything like it before.

I have never experienced anything quite like it since.

Then something remarkable happened.

People came together.

American flags appeared everywhere. Strangers treated one another differently. Political arguments suddenly seemed smaller. People who had very little in common were reminded that they shared something bigger.

We were Americans.

There was grief. There was fear. There was anger.

But there was also unity.

Real unity.

Not the kind politicians talk about in speeches. The kind you could actually feel.

For a brief moment, the labels we use to divide ourselves seemed less important. Republican or Democrat. Left or right. Where you lived. What you believed. What you looked like.

None of it seemed as important as the fact that we were Americans experiencing the same pain, the same fear and the same uncertainty together.

That part of the story matters too.

Twenty-five years later, we live in a country that seems determined to divide itself over almost everything. Politics has become personal. Disagreement has become hostility. Social media rewards outrage, humiliation and the worst assumptions we can make about one another.

But disagreement itself is not the problem.

Americans have always disagreed. We are supposed to disagree. That is part of living in a free country.

The problem begins when we forget that there is something larger than those disagreements.

We share a country.

We share communities.

We share tragedies and victories.

Whether we vote the same way, worship the same way, look the same or believe the same things, our future is still tied together.

September 11 reminded us of that in the most painful way imaginable.

I hope we never need another tragedy to remember it again.

We should not need buildings to fall before we appreciate the person standing next to us. We should not need a national emergency before remembering that the people we disagree with are still our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends and our fellow Americans.

We can argue.

We can vote differently.

We can have completely different ideas about what this country should become.

But we are still Americans.

And we are still in this together.

So when we say “Never Forget,” we should remember more than the attack itself.

Remember the fear.

Remember the lives that were taken.

Remember the firefighters and police officers who ran toward buildings everyone else was desperately trying to escape.

Remember Peter Ganci.

Remember Stephen Siller.

Remember John Perry.

Remember Moira Smith.

Remember Welles Crowther and the red bandana.

Remember the thousands of other acts of courage whose names most of us will never know.

But also remember the silence that fell over the country.

Remember the flags.

Remember strangers treating each other like neighbors.

Remember what it felt like when nearly 300 million Americans stopped the normal rhythm of their lives and experienced the same historic moment together.

And remember what happened afterward, when for a brief moment, America remembered what it meant to be united.

Twenty-five years later, perhaps that is the part of September 11 we need to remember most.