25 Year Later
September 8, 2026
“We must never forget.”
——-
It was 1986, and I was in New York for the first time. My associate and I were in “The City” on business. As young stockbrokers who were changing firms, we were required to travel to Wall Street for additional training. During off hours, like most visitors, we toured New York as much as possible. One evening at dusk we found ourselves at the foot of an impressive elevator bank where a man wearing a tuxedo greeted us. “Welcome to the Windows of the World,” the gentleman said. He must have uttered those words literally hundreds of thousands of times. The elevator doors opened, and within seconds, the two of us were catapulted 110 floors to the top of the World Trade Center.
It is difficult to comprehend that 25 years have passed since September 11, 2001. For those of us old enough to remember that morning, however, the passage of time has done little to erase where we were, what we saw or how we felt. Millions of us watched in disbelief as the attacks unfolded in New York, at the Pentagon and in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum records that 2,977 people from 90 nations were killed that day. Yet statistics alone have never adequately explained 9/11. It was personal. In my original reflections on the anniversary, I wrote about fraternity brothers who were in New York, a friend who was speaking with colleagues in the North Tower when the first plane struck, and another childhood friend who was in the second tower and never came home.
I also remember what happened in our own home thousands of miles away. For months afterward, my wife would light a candle each evening and place it in our front window as a quiet demonstration of respect for those who had been murdered. At the time, I conducted considerable business overseas, and clients and prospective clients regularly offered their condolences. That mattered because September 11 was not simply an American tragedy. The victims represented nations from around the world, and people far beyond our borders mourned with us. For a brief period following one of the darkest days in our history, there was also something remarkable: an extraordinary sense of unity, compassion and common purpose. We were reminded that despite our differences, there are moments when humanity has far more in common than we sometimes recognize.
A few years ago, My wife and I toured the 9/11 Memorial in New York, something I believe every American who has the opportunity should experience. Standing where the Twin Towers once stood and seeing the names surrounding the reflecting pools transforms history back into individual human lives—parents, children, husbands, wives, friends and coworkers who simply went to work or boarded an airplane that morning and never returned. The Memorial honors all 2,977 people killed in the attacks. More recently, we visited the Flight 93 National Memorial in Western Pennsylvania, another deeply moving reminder of the courage demonstrated that morning.
Perhaps the most important difference between the 20th anniversary, when I originally wrote about this subject, and the 25th is something we rarely stop to consider: according to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, approximately 100 million Americans today are too young to remember September 11, 2001. For them, 9/11 is history rather than memory. That makes our responsibility greater, not smaller. Those of us who remember need to tell the stories—not only of terrorism and unimaginable loss, but of firefighters running toward danger, strangers helping strangers, passengers aboard Flight 93 fighting back, and a country that, at least for a time, put many of its differences aside.
Twenty-five years ago, a phrase seemed to appear everywhere: Never Forget. A quarter-century later, those two words carry even greater meaning. Remember the 2,977 lives taken. Remember their families. Remember the first responders and countless others whose lives were forever changed. Remember the courage. Remember the compassion. And perhaps remember something else as well—the unity we discovered when we needed one another most.
The Takeaway: Twenty-five years is long enough for memories to fade and for a new generation to grow up knowing September 11 only from photographs, videos and history books. Those of us who lived through that day have an obligation to keep its stories alive. Never Forget should be more than a phrase we repeat once a year. It should be a promise we continue to keep.
