*Written with Veridion Smart
There are some dates that stay with you. You don’t have to look at a calendar to know what they mean. You don’t have to be reminded of where you were or what you were doing. The date itself can bring back a feeling, a picture, a voice, or a moment you thought you had buried somewhere in the back of your mind. I think of the date JFK was assassinated, or the date the rocket Challenger exploded…
September 11 is another one of those dates.
For those of us who were old enough to remember that morning, the memories can be painfully clear. We remember where we were, the television, the confusion. We remember the moment we realized that whatever was happening wasn’t something that would be over by lunchtime.
But recently, I found myself thinking about September 11 from a completely different perspective. I was talking with Tamsin, the young man who often helps me write this blog and market my books, and he’s too young to remember that day. And that made me wonder:
What does 9/11 mean to someone who doesn’t remember 9/11?
Tamsin doesn’t have a personal memory of watching the towers fall. He didn’t experience the fear and confusion of that morning the way so many of us older folks did. Instead, he knows September 11 through stories, photographs, history.
And through the people who DO remember.
Perhaps that’s something we don’t think about often enough. There’s a whole generation growing up now that will never have a firsthand memory of September 11 – which is an observation that blew me away when I first realized it. I thought, everyone through all eternity should remember it exactly the way I do!
But, for these young people, it will be something they learn about from us. And that makes the stories we tell incredibly important.
The history of September 11, 2001, is enormous. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, and 2,977 people were killed in the attacks, leaving thousands more as survivors, devastated family members, first responders, and witnesses to an event that changed the world.
But when you hear that number, it’s easy to forget something very important: Those weren’t just numbers; they were people.
Someone’s mother, father, daughter, son, husband, wife, best friend. Someone who had plans for that day. Innocents who thought they would be going home that evening.
That’s the part of September 11 that I don’t want to lose: The people. The stories. The memories.
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum has preserved more than 1,000 personal oral histories from survivors, responders, family members, and others who were deeply affected by what happened. The annual commemoration ceremony held at the Memorial each September 11 matters so much because it gives a human voice to an event that can otherwise become just another chapter in a history book.
And that brings me back to Tamsin.
He was too young to remember 9/11 firsthand, but he doesn’t need to pretend that he does. He can listen. He can learn. He can ask questions. And someday, he can pass those stories on to someone who wasn’t even born when it happened.
If he ever asks me what I was doing on the morning of September 11, I’ll tell him I was sleeping in when my husband, my daughter, and my toddler-grandchildren came trooping into the kitchen, screaming at the tops of their lungs for me to get up and turn on the television. Well, I did, grumbling beneath my breath about how the world wasn’t going to end just because I slept a little later – and the images I saw on our screen didn’t make sense to me.
Tiny figures were diving from the fiery tops of the World Trade Centers that I’d thought would stand forever, proud and touching the sky. Fire trucks and police cars were racing toward the burning towers while terrified, bleeding, screaming people ran away from them. New York City was blanketed in and blinded by whirlwinds of white smoke, revolving dust, and cascading debris as the towers slowly came down.
The world, in truth, was ending. And I knew, as I lit my first cigarette out of four packs that day, it would never be the same.
I remember my family leaving our house to donate blood – and discovering that no one needed it because there weren’t that many survivors. I remember buying a baseball cap with God Bless America stitched across the front from a fireman in the street who couldn’t hold back his tears. I remember wanting to hug everyone I saw in our grocery store just because I was so happy to be alive – and so glad that they were as well. I remember going to church, just because I needed to go.
Maybe that’s what NEVER FORGET really means. It doesn’t mean that every generation will remember 9/11 in exactly the same way. How could they? It just means that we refuse to allow the people who were there, and the people who were lost, to become nothing more than names and numbers.
The 9/11 Memorial itself describes its mission not only as honoring those who were killed, but also recognizing the survivors and those who showed extraordinary compassion in the aftermath – because sometimes the most important part of remembering isn’t remembering exactly what happened, but who was there. And sometimes memories don’t belong to just one generation. Instead, they’re passed down until, eventually, someone who wasn’t even alive or old enough to understand carries that story forward.
That’s how memories survive: Not because we all experienced them ourselves, but because someone cared enough to tell us.
So, today, September 11, 2026, I’ll remember it in the best way I can.
I’ll remember Todd Beamer and his companions, courageous United Airlines passengers on flight 93, and the phrase that’s permanently attached to his name with honor and pride: Let’s Roll.
I’ll remember Michael Benfante who, with co-worker John Cerqueira, helped wheelchair user Tina Hansen, who was stuck on the 68th floor of the North Tower, down multiple flights and through treacherous conditions in a lightweight emergency chair. All three safely got out of the building.
And I’ll never forget how all kinds of boats began to gather even before a call for assistance went out from the U.S. Coast Guard. In the end, more than 100 ferries, fishing boats, ships that usually just cruised the harbor for dinner, and even tugboats joined the effort. During a nine-hour period, about 500,000 people – all terrified, and many bleeding or in shock – were carried to safety.
Some memories are lived, some are inherited, and some are entrusted to us. Maybe our job is simply to carry them carefully.
NEVER FORGET.
I never will.
*I want to toss out a personal ‘thank you’ to Biography.com for its contribution to my all-too-brief list of heroes, and to the New Yorker, on www.pexels.com, for its beautiful photo of the 9/11 Memorial.