Twenty-five years ago this morning, Ted and I were in our backyard in Rockville, Maryland, with our brand-new baby daughter. It was the first real breath of fall. The air was clear, and we were holding new life and receiving it as gift.
Then we heard the jets. They were low and fast, and once you have heard that sound you never forget it.
Our next-door neighbor ran across the yard and told us the Twin Towers had been hit. Our other children were in schools throughout the Washington suburbs, and the only thought that formed was to gather them and bring them home before the whole region descended into chaos. Then the Pentagon was hit, followed by the news from Pennsylvania.
September 11 is not remote history for me. It remains intensely visual and visceral even now: the beautiful fall weather, the newborn in our arms, the screaming jets overhead, the sudden knowledge that thousands of lives were being extinguished while we stood under an ordinary sky, the fear of children still away from us, and the urgent need to get every one of them under our roof.
Nearly three thousand people were murdered that day. Families were torn apart. Men and women were trapped in the towers with fire below them and no way down. First responders ran toward death, and ordinary Americans on a hijacked plane chose to fight rather than allow their plane to become another weapon.
This was not merely a tragedy, nor was it an “event.” It was a deliberate terrorist attack committed by evil men against innocent human beings and against the United States. I have no patience for politicians, propagandists, or apologists who still refuse to name what happened, or who helped create the conditions in which such evil could flourish.
First thing this morning, Ted lowered the American flag at the front of our home. Today we will go to Holy Mass to pray, and then we will go to Fort Sam Houston and pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet in remembrance.
That is how we will mark this day. We will remember the dead, pray for the souls of those who were murdered, and pray for the families who still live inside that wound. We will honor our country, and we will tell the truth without softening it.
I hope you will find your own way to remember and pray today. Twenty-five years later, we must still say it: Never forget.