A quarter of a century later, how are we to make sense of the terrorist attacks of September 11, the sheer brutality, gut-wrenching horror, and spectral memory of which are still too painful to comprehend?
Statistics are stubbornly impersonal. It is only when we zoom into the individual stories of that terrible day that the true portrait of 9/11 — a tapestry of fear, grief, courage, and patriotism — begins to come into focus.
A striking ten percent of Americans alive today were born after the attacks. May we safeguard these memories in our hearts, share them for the world, and especially our kids, to hear, and resolve never to allow 9/11 to become a mere date in a history book.
25 Stories
“Mom . . . this is Welles. I . . . I want you to know that I’m OK.”
Known as the “Red Bandana Man,” Welles Crowther left this message for his mom before leading as many as 18 people, one of whom he carried on his back, out of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. His body was later discovered in the lobby — just “seconds away from being clear,” one police officer reported.
Welles, 24, had perished on one of his multiple trips back into the ill-fated building.
As one survivor Welles helped rescue wrote, “People can live 100 years and not have the compassion, the wherewithal to do what he did.”
In 2021, Monica Iken opened the box that had contained her wedding dress for nearly 20 years. Married for 11 months before her beloved husband, Michael, died in the South Tower, Iken wore her dress to the 9/11 20th-anniversary ceremony to make a statement: “That I was happily married the day he died. And I was looking forward to having a family.”
Former New York Governor George Pataki described Iken as one of the most “tenacious, relentless” advocates for the 9/11 Memorial. She founded the nonprofit September’s Mission to help support victims’ families and champion a monument at Ground Zero. Her story serves as a poignant vignette of the grief and admirable passion for public service shared by so many surviving loved ones.
3. Al Torres
Convention of States grassroots leader Al Torres, a former CIA officer, arrived at Kandahar International Airport, Afghanistan, on September 26, 2001 — just 15 days after the attacks. His destination: Forward Operating Base Gecko, near the Pakistani border.
His target: Osama bin Laden.
Torres describes being handed an armored vest and an old AK-47 — without a magazine. “Y’all got any bullets for this thing?” he asked as they took off into “decidedly non-friendly territory.”
“I can laugh about it now,” he said, “but I will never forget the horrified look on the case officer’s face when he realized he had forgotten the ammunition for my weapon.”
“Don’t worry,” Torres joked. “I’ll just yell bang, bang.”
In Kandahar, he encountered gut-wrenching messages scribbled out by soldiers who had personally lost friends and loved ones in the attacks — a sobering glimpse into “the pain carried by many of the men and women who served there.”
“I lived a small part of the response,” he said. “And because of what I saw and what I experienced, I cannot — and will not — ever forget.”
4. Stephen Siller
Firefighter Stephen Gerard Siller should have been playing golf.
He was off duty. He was on his way to a game with his brothers. But when he heard the news about the Twin Towers, he immediately turned back to help.
When he couldn’t get his truck through the closed Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, he ran the rest of the way on foot.
His wife, five children, and brothers never heard from him again.
On 9/11, thousands of people found themselves in unexpected danger. Siller put himself in danger to protect them. His life forces us to ask what we would do if given a similar opportunity.
Just as December 7, 1941, awakened a sleeping giant, September 11, 2001, filled Flight 93’s heroic passengers with a terrible resolve.
After piecing together that their hijacked Boeing 757 was intended as a fourth weapon in al-Qaeda’s unfolding attack, these immortal patriots valiantly agreed to fight back, forcing the terrorists to crash the plane into a field in Pennsylvania — a move that killed everyone aboard, but spared the terrorists’ next intended target, likely the White House or the Capitol.
As Matthew May wrote, “Their courage saved countless lives on the ground in Washington, D.C., including the very representatives of our republic. But the symbolic importance of what they preserved cannot be overstated. Just as the ongoing construction of the Capitol dome during the Civil War symbolized the will of the Union to be made whole once again, 93 secured the first strike in a battle of civilizations and declared to the world that, although severely wounded, the United States was still standing.”
The events of September 11 served as a window into the treacherous depths of human depravity. It also put the best of our own people on full display. On the one hand, the nation witnessed an inhumane desire to exterminate life; on the other, an unnatural, almost superhuman readiness to put oneself in harm’s way to protect life.
The boatmen of Lower Manhattan belonged to the second group.
On that fateful morning, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who ran South to escape Ground Zero found themselves trapped between the water’s edge and the growing nightmare behind them. With the tunnels, bridges, and subways shut down, “boats, usually an afterthought in most New Yorkers’ minds, were for the first time in over a century the only way in or out of Lower Manhattan.”
This inspiring, Tom Hanks-narrated documentary outlines the heroic story of the dozens of everyday Americans who piloted their boats towards the billowing smoke to help evacuate over 500,000 citizens in less than nine hours — more than the 338,226 soldiers who were rescued at Dunkirk over nine days.
As one captain remarked, “Average people — they stepped up when they needed to. They showed me, when the American people need to come together and pull together, they will do it.”
7. Brian Birdwell
Article V fans may recognize Texas state lawmaker Brian Birdwell from his many passionate speeches about Convention of States, but his service to the country and dedication to liberty run much deeper than that.
A Gulf War veteran and Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Legion of Merit recipient, Birdwell found himself in the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, “just 15 to 20 yards from an 80-ton jet coming through the building at 530 miles per hour with 3,000 gallons of jet fuel.”
With more than 60 percent of his body critically burned, Birdwell miraculously clawed his way back from the brink of death and went on to serve as the founder of Face the Fire Ministries, a Texas state legislator, and the Assistant Secretary of War for Sustainment at the Pentagon.
WATCH: Brian Birdwell remembers 9/11
Steve Scheibner should have been in the pilot’s seat on American Airlines Flight 11. But a rare, last-minute substitution kept his feet on the ground — and offered up a slightly more senior pilot, Tom McGuinness, as a tragic propitiation for the terrorist’s blades.
“All I know for certain,” Scheibner said, “is I was the one left behind and with that comes an obligation.”
McGuinness, co-pilot on American Airlines Flight 11 and the man who died in Scheibner’s place, was one of the first people in the world to experience the horror of 9/11. He left behind a wife, Cheryl, and two young kids, Jennifer and Tommy. The family celebrated McGuinness’s birthday on September 10 and said goodbye to him on the morning of September 11 as they would have on any “normal day.” A testament to the man’s lasting legacy of faith, Tommy went on to become a pilot for American Airlines, and Jennifer married an American Airlines pilot.
All three members of McGuinness’s family have praised him as a powerful spiritual leader.
“My dad was such a good role model,” said Tommy. “He was my hero, as much as a 14-year-old can have a hero. I looked up to him in everything that he was and everything that he stood for and everything he believed in. I wanted to be like that; I wanted to be like him.”
Robyn Higley never met her hero. She never met her dad.
One of an estimated 105 babies born after their fathers died on 9/11, Higley has been forced to mourn the horrors of that day in truly unusual ways — forced to grieve the loss of a man she never knew.
“I know his death was not in vain,” the self-described “daddy’s little girl” told ABC News in 2016, when she was only 14. “He’s a hero. He’s my hero.”
The “9/11 Babies” — a sobriquet Higley understandably dislikes — are a testament to the myriad ways in which the attacks scarred those left behind — even the unborn.
To be continued…