What it was like to learn about the attacks, years after they happened.
What it was like to learn about the attacks, years after they happened
As we commemorate the September 11 attacks, we asked our staffers who were too young to remember or weren’t yet born on that fateful day to reflect on how they experienced the event growing up, and what it still means to them.
Kamden Mulder, born 2002:
My parents were married on September 8, 2001. Just three days later, on the first morning of their honeymoon, they woke to the news that terrorists had attacked the country.
The earliest moments of their marriage, moments that should have been filled with excitement and dreams of the life they would build together, were instead characterized by uncertainty and fear as the country reeled from a brutal attack on its own soil.
The older I get, the more their experience affects me. I was not alive for 9/11 — I was born almost exactly one year later — but each year I find myself reflecting on the lives lost, the sacrifices made, and the profound impact the terrorist attack has had on American life ever since.
You can walk through the 9/11 Museum in New York City and pay your respects at the memorial. You can see the photographs, hear the stories, and learn the names of those who were lost. But for those who were not yet born, there is an unavoidable limit to what we can understand. We know 9/11 happened, but we can never fully comprehend what it was like to experience it.
Now, as I move toward a similar stage of life to the one my parents were in when September 11 happened, I find myself empathizing with what it meant to begin not only a marriage, but a family, in a post-9/11 America. I cannot imagine the uncertainty they must have felt as they looked toward a future that, only days earlier, seemed so full of possibility.
And I understand, perhaps more than I once did, what a privilege it is to grow into adulthood without having experienced that same fear and uncertainty, and to make plans for my future without wondering what kind of country I will be building that future in.
John Puri, born 2004:
On every September 11 since my teenage years, I sit in front of the television and watch footage of the attacks. There is usually a new documentary on some streaming service, or I go back to an older one. Whatever it is, I watch the entire film, quietly and alone.
This is not something I do for any ounce of enjoyment. There were September 11ths when I put my ritual off until the end of the day, when I had a hard time making myself sit down. I don’t want to watch the planes hit the towers, or the panicked citizens on the streets of Manhattan. I would rather not hear the calls to 911 from the trapped workers on the highest floors, or see them jump to hasten the inevitable, ever again in my life. My heart falls into my stomach when the buildings crumble into toxic dust that cakes all the people below, and the sirens go on forever, and the world is ending.
I witness 9/11 as best someone my age can because I feel I have to — like it’s something owed. Many young Americans nowadays, raised in security, confess that they do not understand why national defense is an important matter, requiring constant diligence. I know why, because I remind myself what happens when our defenses falter. I watch for the passengers of Flight 93, because a random selection of Americans, not so unlike you or me, showed the rest of us what Americans have to do. And I watch because, after everything is over, there’s a flag standing in the rubble.
Skyler Safriet, born 2004:
It isn’t autumn at Boston College without red bandannas. On backpacks, in pockets, hung on dorm room walls, waving at football games. They’re our reminder of a beloved alum, the “man in the red bandanna,” Welles Crowther, who had graduated from Boston College in the summer of ’99. He had only been in his second year as a junior equities trader and was working in the South Tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. He was a volunteer firefighter who had carried this token piece of fabric with him since he was a boy, a gift from his father.
Through the smoke and carnage of the 78th floor after the planes hit, Welles wore this bandanna while guiding people down the only clear set of stairs, carrying those who couldn’t walk themselves. When he got them to safety, he ran back up the stairs into danger to find more people to save.
A beloved son of Boston College ran into the Valley of Death, over and over, and ultimately gave his life to save countless others.
I imagine during this time of life, he felt much of the way that I do now. Full of ambition and force, happy and bold, excited about the life already lived and grateful for how much more of it lies ahead. He had the same education that I and thousands of my classmates had, with the highest expectation that we graduate from the Jesuit tradition and spend our lives as “men and women for others.”
I do not think he walked into work that day ready to give his life for those around him. But when the opportunity came to be a man for others, he lived out this command to its ultimate end. It is a painful loss, one of so many painful losses. There is nothing that balances out a world 25 years later without him and without 3,000 more.
So we hold on to our bandannas from our first fall to life beyond, to remember that we do not need to be extraordinary people to be called to extraordinary sacrifice. I will never forget that Welles was just like me. I can only try to spend my life as he did. And I find great hope that there are thousands of us touched by his legacy who feel the same.
Eva Terry, born 2002:
When I was in fourth grade, my classmate Nikki told me her aunt died in 9/11. We were standing in my front doorway when she said it, and I remember not believing her for years. In my nine-year-old mind, the September 11 attacks were completely separated from reality in both time and space. I did not believe that Nikki’s relatives could have lived in the mystical land of New York City, and the tragedy itself was completely intangible.
But with age and exposure, I have imagined her young aunt in the footage I’ve seen. There’s a boom in her office building, then panic, smoke, horror. I can imagine Nikki’s mom watching her TV, experiencing a nightmare awake. Through that morning in New York City, ash fell on cars lining the streets and everything else. Time has done the same thing to the day.
Lauren Veldhuizen, born 2004:
The world before 9/11 is unfamiliar. Setting aside two hours for airport navigation (not including actual travel time) seems normal. Taking off my shoes as I stand in line to prove I am not harboring a bomb in my socks seems normal. It took a full confrontation with the horrors of that day to realize that these things are not, in fact, normal.
The gravity of what actually happened hit me when I visited D.C. for the first time on my eighth-grade trip. We visited the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the First Amendment and free press. It housed a 9/11 exhibit. This exhibit occupied a small square of floor space, but rose straight up a few floors toward the top of the building. “U.S. Attacked.” Front pages from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, and dozens more lined the walls. A piece from one of the towers stood in the middle of the headlines. A back room tucked behind the wall of printed terror looped a video honoring the journalists who died covering the event.
I didn’t say a word as I read the headlines and watched the video footage — I just cried. The world after 9/11 was not, and should never feel, normal.
Charles Hilu, born 2001:
My mom called for my dad to come downstairs. He walked down with two-and-a-half-month-old me in his arms and looked at the TV news broadcast reporting that a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Soon after, we all saw the second plane hit.
Although I technically witnessed the September 11 attacks on television, I was too young to have any recollection of them, and I only know a world draped in their shadow. I continue to experience their effects every time I go to the airport, and they impact much of our foreign policy today. I’ve always thought of them as a great national tragedy, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how the attacks have influenced my thinking since their legacy has been a constant presence in my life.
Something I do remember: One morning when I was in the fourth grade, I came down the stairs of my house, this time walking, rather than my dad carrying me. I found him sitting in the living room watching TV. He would often do this to check how bad the traffic was before he took me to school, but this time he was watching much more intently than usual. As soon as he saw me, he informed me of the biggest news of the day — Navy SEALs had just completed a mission to kill Osama bin Laden.