Tomorrow, September 11, 2026, will mark 25 years since the terrorist attacks on the United States that shook the nation and took the lives of 246 passengers across four airplanes, 125 U.S. Department of Defense employees and more than 2,600 New Yorkers, including hundreds of firefighters and other first responders.
The aftermath was greater than even those who watched it unfold on the news in real time realized.
In New York City, at least 56 buildings were damaged, with seven completely destroyed, including both of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers; the resulting toxic air has led to more than 80,000 illnesses and approximately 9,000 additional deaths, affecting emergency personnel, local residents, debris cleanup crews and even neighborhood school children.
In Washington, D.C., firefighters spent three days extinguishing the fire at the Pentagon and a number of survivors have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, COPD, asthma and other related health issues.
In Pennsylvania, volunteers joined the FBI, National Parks Service and emergency responders to collect Flight 93 debris, and a memorial remains in the field in which the plane crashed because of the heroic actions of passengers on board.
And across the United States, millions still remember where they were and how they felt the day the nation was under attack, a tragedy that changed the country forever in ways big and small. On the wall of the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City is a quote from a poem by Virgil of Ancient Rome, created with gold letters forged from steel recovered in the rubble of the Twin Towers, placed over 2983 individual squares of blue in a work called Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning by Spencer Finch.
It reads “No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time.”
Twenty-five years later, we remember them, and we honor them in our service not only to our veterans and first responders, but to each other. As we each reflect upon that day, those lost and the aftermath, may we keep close to our hearts the words of the late Sandy Dahl, widow of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl: “If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.