In 1999, Baz Luhrman produced a spoken word piece called “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)” based on a graduation speech by Mary Schmich. It played on the local FM radio station nearly every morning on my way to school. And this line has always stuck with me:
“Don’t worry about the future, or worry, but know that worry is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind. The kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.”
9/11 was on a Tuesday.
Today is always an incredibly hard day for so many of us who remember watching the horrors of 9/11 happen in real time. There has been no day in 25 years I have not thought about. My entire career in government has been shaped by it. And it is incredibly to imagine that a quarter of a century has passed since, while tying my shoes to get ready for an early morning run, my dorm room phone rang. The entire day is etched into my mind in a way that can never be erased.
Every year, I watch and read the same things and make the same donations. My own private remembrance ceremony, a vigil I perform, not just for those who died, but for the world we lost.
- The Real Heroes are Dead.
- This New Yorker article about the life and death of Rick Rescorla, head of security for Morgan Stanley has made me obsessive about knowing how to get out of every building I have ever worked in. Tonight, before you head home, try to leave the building a new way. Take a friend and use a different staircase, a different door, make a new route. You might need it some day.
- Boatlift
- The largest maritime evacuation in history isn’t Dunkirk, it’s lower Manhattan on 9/11. This 11-minute documentary tells the story of the regular people evacuating traumatized New Yorkers who had no way to leave their burning city.
- Storycorps on Fr. Mychal Judge
- Fr. Mychal Judge was 9/11’s first confirmed casualty. He was the chaplain for the FDNY. This is the story of how another priest, his good friend, honored his life.
- Steve Buscemi Remembers 9/11
- Actor Steve Buscemi was a New York City firefighter before he was famous. On 9/11, he put on his old gear, reported to his old company, and spent days at the site cleaning rubble, searching for survivors. He is now an advocate for the health needs of the first responders who have been sickened by their time at the site by the toxic debris and smoke. Read more about that here.
- Every year, I donate to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum so that future generations might remember (donations are match-doubled on 9/11). This year, I also donated to Friends of Firefighters, which provides mental health counseling to firefighters from communities across America.
- The Prayer List
- Xavier University has compiled a list of prayers for different needs, from different faiths so that all can find some measure of comfort on this day.
- Paul Simon plays The Sound of Silence at the 9/11 Memorial
Today, as a form of remembrance, please share your memories of this day with someone who was too young to remember or wasn’t born yet. But we go on with our lives, even when it feels silly in the face of such memories (sillier when part of your life is a fashion blog). We go on, even if scarred.
May their memories be a blessing.
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Thank you for sharing these. For anyone from NYC or the tri-state area, this is another great read to add: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/magazine/the-way-we-live-now-11-11-01-lost-and-found.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AVE.4EcL.Q9wXGlgVYvd8&smid=url-share
Thank you– had not seen the Boat lift story.
I was a lawyer in Cleveland, Ohio on 9/11. The office set up a television in the common area. I walked back and forth between my office and the common area all morning, not able to sit anywhere very long. I watched the first tower come down and said to someone else, “Everyone got out, right?” I couldn’t fathom the scale of the buildings and the number of people involved.
Everyone knew someone who was in NYC. An opposing counsel called me as she was rushing to New York. Her daughter, also a lawyer, was 8 months pregnant and had been at her office in lower Manhattan. She walked for hours uptown until she reached her neighborhood and realized she was in labor.
I am moved and impressed by this post. Thank you
I wish someone had resources on how to explain this to children. My 10 yr old niece, mom, and I went to the memorial last summer. My mom and I were talking about where we were when it happened. My niece asked what it was about. I told her terrorists flew planes into the buildings. She asked what a terrorist is. It was just such a complicated issue and I felt so ill-equipped to explain it to a ten year old so she could understand not only the tragedy but the meaning of it.
Our kindergarteners were just taken to specials when the news spread immediately through our elementary school staff. We knew that in spite of our visceral need to check in with those we love, we had to stay calm and protective throughout the long hours of that hideous day. Because making our children feel secure at school every day was always everyone’s goal, even before the learning started.
Thank you for posting this.
I was two years out of college and working in DC, four blocks away from the White House. My mom worked in the Pentagon annex at the time. Like so many others, I watched the news evolve from ‘a plane flew into the WTC’ to ‘this is a terrorist attack’ to realizing DC was under attack as well. When we evacuated our office, I walked with a coworker to the Memorial Bridge and caught a ride with her and her roommate to get home to Northern Virginia because there was no cell service and I was terrified when I couldn’t reach my mom. I am very lucky that she was fine, but I can still remember, viscerally, inching past the Pentagon in traffic on 395, and seeing the plane and building still smoking and burning. Like so many others who grew up and lived here, over the following days, I learned of several friends who lost family members that day. It all feels very surreal now, but I will truly never forget.
Ever since I saw one of your posts about the Rick Rescorla article, I think about evacuation response as well. His legacy has made an impact.
Thank you for these resources. I did not know that about Steve Buscemi!
This year, Rosh Hashanah (the birthday of the world) fell on September 11. I don’t remember that happening before, and we all noted the tension of a joyful day and a somber day intersecting. When we said the prayer for those we have lost (family, friends, Holocaust victims, October 7th victims), we included the victims of September 11. The sermon focused on the same day marking both creation (the birth of the world) and destruction (9/11) and the challenge of living with both truths. The rabbi said that requires both resolve and courage.
I was a senior in high school in a small town in Iowa. When I got to school, I heard a few people talking about something happening to skyscrapers in New York but didn’t really grasp it until my first period class. My classroom that had the built-in TV, and my teacher turned on the news while more students crowded in. We all sat kind of dumbfounded. Later on I learned that the few airplane contrails people in town saw that day were from Bush crossing Iowa on his way to Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska. So much of my subsequent undergraduate and graduate studies as a political science and history nerd then got shaped by the need to understand what happened. 9/11 is such a “I remember where I was when….” moment that the generational memory gap really hits me.
I was 12 years old in 7th grade art class, just returned from a school assembly. Our art teacher regularly had the radio on, and we heard the news there. The rest of the day was mostly teachers letting us watch the news. What I remember was the uncertainty — we didn’t know what was going to happen next.
In 2012 I was a teacher myself. I realized my 7th grade students didn’t know what 9/11 was after the principal called for a moment of silence on the PA after morning announcements. I pulled up Google images and showed the kids what happened, and I remember tears streaming down my face as I told them I was their age and what had happened. Surprisingly (because I did not have great classroom management), not a single kid laughed at my emotions – they were all taking it in.
I was a second year associate at a public accounting firm in Philadelphia…we were in the “bullpen” a room with long tables and phones that you answered to do work that others needed to be done. The scheduler ran out of her office and yelled “go to cnn.com, a plane just hit the world trade center”…we all tried, the internet was jammed. I picked up one of the phones and called my dad and told him to turn on the tv. We made our way upstairs to where there was a tv – the only channel was bloomberg. It was turned on and the hosts were reporting the news, showing the first tower, while also reporting on the price of oil as this was happening. No one truly grasped the severity at this point. Suddenly, they cut to the second tower when the plane hit it…the tenor of the broadcast changed as they realized, as did us the viewers that this was not an accident. I still remember as the tower fell…not truly understanding what I was seeing. It was awful.