It is 23 years since that fateful Tuesday morning when a brilliant blue sky in lower Manhattan turned dark with smoke, and downtown streets and buildings were covered in ash. Somehow, all of us – whether we were there at the World Trade Center, in offices, homes, schools, or just going about the business of another Tuesday in September – managed to find the strength to see a future beyond this unthinkable tragedy.
Today is that future.
Look around the World Trade Center campus today; it is nearly built-out. New towers have risen, the St. Nicholas Greek Church has been re-rebuilt, a performing arts center that brings the lifeforce of theater and dance to the campus has opened, and perhaps most significant for us today – a museum that honors the pain, heroism, and sacrifice of 9/11, and a memorial constructed on the footprints of the original North and South towers gives voice to those lost on September 11, 2001, and in the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Two thousand, nine hundred eighty-three names are inscribed in the bronze parapets that surround the footprints of the original Twin Towers. Also on the campus, a memorial glade honors those who died saving lives or from illnesses related to working the recovery. And a smaller, more private garden in Liberty Park honors the Port Authority employees who died from illnesses related to 9/11.
In 2024, a new generation has reached adulthood in the more than two decades since Sept. 11, 2001. We come today to do more than “say the names,” but to tell their stories, as well.
As a child, I would hear stories from people who survived not just the horrors of the Holocaust, but also, as a Korean American, the atrocities committed against my forebears. The only way we learn how to deal with the present, is to understand the past – the context – that came before this moment.
In the days and weeks after 9/11, the streets of New York were covered with handmade posters with the faces of people missing. Impromptu shrines appeared in public parks and squares.
I saw these firsthand when I took part in a legislative trip to Ground Zero with fellow state Senators and then-Acting Governor Donald DiFrancesco. We had boarded a Coast Guard vessel in Hoboken and when we docked near the site, there they were – a sea of personal notes, candles, pictures, posters, and teddy bears. Collectively, they spoke of the pain of family members, of the loss, the sorrow, and the unspeakable grief.
Across the region, we were drawn to these impromptu shrines to look at candid snapshots of men and women; young and old; of all faiths, races, and nationalities. We knew little about who they were aside from what a candid snapshot, a small note or a left toy or memento might reveal.
As we near a quarter of a century since that fateful Tuesday, we need to do more now than say the names: we need to tell their stories. All of us who knew people who should be standing with us today, have a responsibility to share with friends and strangers the stories of who these people were in life.
That is the debt we – the living – owe to those who passed.
We rebuild towers. We build memorials. We commemorate the dead. But we cannot change the course of history. We cannot fill empty chairs around kitchen tables or bring a father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, friend to a birthday celebration or a wedding. That is not within our power.
But we can bring the personalities we knew and loved into the present by sharing stories of our past adventures with them. As we move forward, we must celebrate who these 2,983 people were in life. Today must be more than a reflection of loss; it must be an opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary people we knew.
We must tell their stories now – while we remember those stories well – so that this new generation born after 9/11 knows who the people whose names are etched in bronze were.
All of us came together after 9/11 to mourn and grieve, and then to recover the lost and rebuild a new campus. We have done that job. We have a new task now: To tell the stories of the men and women we knew and loved. To tell those stories to everyone and anyone who will listen.
When we do that, we put September 11, 2001, in its proper context for future generations to understand. It was not about towers crumbling. It was about people – of all faiths, cultures, and races – rising up to help those in distress, whether they were in or near the Twin Towers or waiting for someone who would not return home from work.
The story of 9/11 is a story of goodness rising from heart-wrenching tragedy, of resilience, and of the determination of ordinary people who became extraordinary so that one day they could honor the memories and the lives of the 2,983 people lost.
Say the names. Tell their stories.
Kevin J. O’Toole is the Chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.