The past informs the present. In some cases, it more than informs – it compels us to be the best version of ourselves. Few of us think of ourselves as heroes. It is not a word we would use to describe ourselves. Why should we? For those of us who are not on the frontlines of care and protection, heroic deeds are not in our wheelhouse.
Firefighters, police officers, the members of the Armed Forces, doctors, nurses, EMTs – those people are easily identified as heroes. That is part of their extraordinary calling – to serve and protect, to heal and to hold.
But all of us are called to be heroes. Twenty-four years ago, heroes rose from clouds of ash. They helped people move out of harm’s way. They nurtured those who were injured or dazed. They rushed in when many ran away.
9/11. It is the shorthand we use for September 11, 2001, much like an earlier generation could just say December 7th, and the year, 1941, the day of the week, Sunday, and the event, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was all understood. Not so much anymore.
I think of that this year, this 24th anniversary of the horrific attacks that killed 2,983 people at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania. I think of that on the anniversary of the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as well.
Time does not heal all wounds. It often just allows many of us to ignore that some still grieve. Twenty-four years after 9/11, there are families celebrating marriages, births, and graduations without a father, or a mother, or a sibling, or a close friend. Because so many of us want to move on, it is easy to forget there are people, who while fully living their lives because that is what they must do, still have an empty place within themselves where a loved one should be.
The two most moving moments for me during the week of commemorative events marking the anniversary of September 11th, are the Rose Ceremony for Port Authority employees that I wrote about earlier this week, and the Interfaith Service held on 9/11 for Port Authority employees, retirees, and those who have become part of the greater Port Authority family these past decades.
There is a reason why these two events are so meaningful: They are small and they are personal. We lose sight that 9/11 was more than a national tragedy. It was a personal one for the families and loved ones or nearly 3,000 people. And the number of individuals who have succumbed to illnesses related to 9/11 is more than double that now.
Historians look at the big picture. We live in a small, single frame, and in that relatively small space we see individuals who have lost someone they loved. We see the spaces in the small frame where someone is missing, and we know why.
This year is significant because next year is the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and it will come not long after the national celebrations marking 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Next year will be all about the big picture and having spent so much of my professional career in elected office, I know there will be crowds of officials great and small pushing to get inside that big picture.
What happens to the families of the nearly 3,000 lost on 9/11, or the more than double that number of the families of those who died of 9/11-related illnesses? They will be in the picture, too – somewhere in the back. That is the way history is written.
I am not a historian, and neither are most of you.
We need to clearly see the individuals who still feel 9/11 personally. They will be doing that every day they draw breath. They will do that in years that will not have big-picture events for the next 50-plus years.
It is easy to understand why most of us want to move on. It doesn’t affect us, we think. But the heroes inside us – the heroes that risked their lives on 9/11 without thinking whether it affected them or not – call us to do better, to do more.
The heroes inside us do not require us to run into a building before it collapses. But they demand us to remember those who did, and those who could not be rescued. It is not physically a big lift, but it may be the hardest and the heaviest thing we are called to do because being a hero is hard work.
At the Port Authority, I am truly blessed to work with individuals who were there in 1993 and 2001. I am blessed to see individuals whose father or mother served at the Agency come to serve now because it is their turn, whether it be working in an office, at PATH, or as a member of the greatest police force in my humble opinion, the Port Authority Police Department.
And like so many of you, I am blessed by my family, watching a new generation move into its rightful place. It is a gift some families will never fully experience. So, 9/11 and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing are personal. We should see that in our small frame. We do not need a big picture for that.
And we should 24 years later do what heroes did, and what heroes do: Serve and protect, heal and hold.
There is no greater way to honor service and sacrifice, than by freely offering both. May the memories of all we lost be a blessing.
Kevin J. O’Toole is the Chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.