over Chester County.
Twenty- five years. Let that sink in for a moment. Twenty-five years and a not so long from now, the first plane was hitting the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.
Where were you? I was pulling in to my office garage at 2 Tower Bridge in Conshohocken, PA. I heard the news come across the car radio. I sat there in silence with tears running down my face saying to myself (out loud, actually) “They came back.”
I know I’ve told this story since 9/11 but I really did come out of the World Trade Center shopping concourse above the garage when they blew up the garage in February 1993.
It’s 8:45 AM and 8:46 AM the moment of silence at the World Trade Center Memorial in NYC begins.
25 years ago today, everything changed. 2983 people lost their lives.
On February 23, 1993 there was the first attack on the World Trade Center. The attack is one that people don’t talk about.
The years move away from the dates, but we never forget. They are literally dates which live in our minds in infamy. To paraphrase FDR, who was in his time, referring to Pearl Harbor.
One of the photos in this post opens with is one I took one summer and it is the controversial 9/11 Memorial in New Jersey. Known as the “teardrop memorial”, it is located in Bayonne. I think it has a kind of strength and beauty to it.
In 2006 I wrote a piece for the local paper:
Sept. 11, 2006, is the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and United Airlines Flight 93’s crash in the field in Shanksville, Somerset County. This date has special significance to every American, and intense personal significance to far too many individuals who lost friends and loved ones.
But September 11, wasn’t the first time terrorists visited the World Trade Center. In truth, Feb. 26, 1993. was the date of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. I worked in New York at that time at an office located downtown in the financial district.
On that day, I had accompanied an office friend to the World Trade Center to grab an early lunch and to check out some stores in the shopping concourse. We were back outside the Trade Center buildings, getting ready to cross the street, when suddenly the ground shook and moved. I remember that we were looking directly across the street at Century 21, a department store in Lower Manhattan. Then something happened that rarely happens in New York: Everything went eerily still and quiet. We looked up at what we first thought were snowflakes beginning to float and fall from the sky. After all, it was February. Then car alarms began to go off one by one like the cacophony of many distorted bells. The snowflakes, we soon discovered, were in reality ashes.
People began yelling and screaming. It became very confusing and chaotic all at once, like someone flipped a switch to “on.” At first, we both felt rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. I remember feeling a sense of panic at the unknown. We had absolutely no idea what had happened, and hurried back to our office. Reaching it, we were greeted by worried coworkers who told us that someone had set off a bomb underground in the World Trade Center garage.
I will never forget the crazy kaleidoscope of images, throughout that afternoon, of all the people who were related to or knew people in my office who sought refuge in our office after walking down the innumerable flights of steps in the dark to exit the World Trade Center Towers. They arrived with soot all over their faces, hands and clothes. They all wore zombie looks of shock, disbelief and panic.
Of course, the oddest thing about the first terrorist attack on New York City is that I don’t remember much lasting fuss about it. I do remember that President Bill Clinton was newly sworn into office, but I don’t remember him coming to visit New York after the attack. Everything was back to normal in Lower Manhattan in about a month, maybe two. After a while, unless you had worked in New York, or lived in New York, you simply forgot about this “incident.”
So, on the morning of 9/11, as I pulled into my office building’s garage and listened to the breaking news on the radio announcing that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, tears began to run down my face unbidden. I knew in my heart of hearts what happened. I said to myself, “Oh no. They came back.”
I remember picking up my cell phone to call my father, whom I knew to be, at that time, on an Amtrak train bound for New York City. I remember him telling me it was fine and he’d be fine. I wanted him to get off in New Jersey and take a train back to Philadelphia. But the train was already pretty much past all the stations and getting ready to go into the tunnel to New York. That very thought terrified me. To this day, I still do not understand why Amtrak did not stop those last trains from going into New York City as the news of the World Trade Center attacks first broke.
I next remember getting in the elevator and getting off on my office floor to find people clustered around television sets and radios. And the news kept getting worse: first one plane, then a second, then a third, and then a fourth.
The images and news just didn’t stop. Camera cuts from lower Manhattan to Washington to Somerset County. They are images that have to be ingrained in everyone’s mind forever like indelible ink.
It took a couple of days for my father and brother-in-law (who had already been in New York on business) to get out of the city, but eventually they got home safely with many stories to tell of what New York was like in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. A lot of people weren’t so lucky. They never saw their loved ones again after that fateful morning. Many people in the Philadelphia and greater Main Line area lost friends, coworkers and loved ones.
On September 11, I knew people who were lost, but fortunately I didn’t lose any loved ones. I remember for a brief time it seemed we were all a little nicer to each other, and politicians actually seemed to come together as one and grieve as a nation grieved.
But here we are five short years later. I have only seen the site one time where the World Trade Center once stood proudly. That was about a year after the attacks. I remember a distinct pit in my stomach and looked away from the car window. This past June I was in Washington, and had the same intense, awful feeling in my stomach as we drove on the highway past the Pentagon.
Life must go on and time can’t stand still, but all in all I can’t help but wonder: What have we learned since about our country and about ourselves? Five years after 9/11 what have we learned and what have we forgotten? What do we need to remember?
So back to the morning of 9/11 when the first plane hit. I realized then my now late father was on a freaking train to New York City. I pulled out my cell phone, which looked like a weird small brick from Nokia I believe.
I called him. Miraculously he answered. I asked him where he was, and he said Metro Park I said good is it stopped at Metro Park? He said yes why and I said a plane just went in to the World Trade Center. I think it’s a terrorist attack get off and take a train back before you can’t get out of Manhattan.
I will never forget what he said, and it was that the Amtrak conductor assured all of the passengers there was nothing to worry about, and he was just going to continue into New York City.
We didn’t actually talk to him again for a couple of days because you couldn’t get phone calls in or out of New York right after 9/11 for a good couple of days.
I remembered this particular part of 9/11 over the summer when I was at my nephew’s wedding in the Hamptons. It was there I literally saw a guest I hadn’t seen since my late brother-in-law’s funeral many years ago. It was a friend and someone my late brother-in-law used to work with whose family literally lent my late brother-in-law and late father an apartment for a few days because they couldn’t get off the island of Manhattan after 9/11.
People kind of forget that part of the chaos post-terrorist attack. The being cut off from people we knew in all sorts of places, who had ties to places like NYC or Washington, DC.
Other things I remember? Having a couple of childhood friends who were siblings show up on missing and possibly dead lists. One worked for Marsh & McMcLennan and the other for the Port Authority of NY and NJ. One sibling in particular was on that list for days after 9/11. Turns out one or both were out of town.
But I will never forget that feeling of combing through those lists looking to see whom we knew was on those lists. On one list were two guys that went to college with me. One I knew peripherally the other not at all, but I knew who he was. Both were close friends of another friend of mine’s husband.
I remember having a conversation with someone after 9/11 who had a job in the Pentagon. They were the opposite side from where the plane hit.
So many people had stories. I also remember speaking with someone well after 9/11 who if I remember correctly was from like Michigan or something and they knew people who physically went to NYC after 9/11 because they were trying to find family members that worked in the financial district and in the World Trade Center buildings.
A related aside is many years ago before 1993 or 9/11, I had a couple of interviews with brokerage firms or financial places in the World Trade Center buildings. I remember I did not like going up in those elevators. And I also remember there were like big escalators in that building as well. People thought it was such a cachet to work in those buildings and I remember thinking back then they’re just too tall, even in a city of skyscrapers.
I think a lot of us also knew first responders who were from other areas who went to New York City to help. I also know a couple of people whose family members were first responders in the New York Metropolitan area.
In that vein over the years, you’ve had the people who claimed they went to New York to help after 9/11. But didn’t. You even had a guy who said he was assigned from NYPD down to the financial district after 9/11 to help look for people or whatever they were all doing, but really wasn’t he was in the Bronx or something. You also have the tall tales with the current president when it comes to 9/11.
I really despise the people who fake things about being part of efforts post 9/11. I don’t understand people that need to build their own images on a national tragedy.
Someone I know who was the first responder said today that the best way to honor people on 9/11 is to be the people we all were 9/12.
I saw this drone show thing from New York and it’s very moving. I’m sharing a snippet from the ABC affiliate up there:
As a country from the most local things to national, we are a cesspool of messiness. People wanna tell you what it’s like to be a patriot or an American. They don’t have the first clue. We have become an international embarrassment, not strength. And because of the current administration, we are once again I believe wide open to incidents like what happened 9/11 25 years ago.
We have a president who wants to tell tall tales about 9/11 and even issue AI generated ridiculousness to make himself look like a hero on whatever his truth social account is.
We have a president with an administration which kowtows to him when they know they shouldn’t. I can’t decide if it’s because they are actually afraid of him or they can’t admit they made a mistake in getting behind him. of course the other point to ponder is some of them simply put are just stupid especially the women I have never seen so many ridiculous women in positions of power. It’s embarrassing to be a woman and look at them. Bad plastic surgery and Botox-laden twits. And the men? Half of them who are in positions where they have anything to do with the military have no military background. They’re just there because they’ll do what what’s his name wants.
We are an international joke. We are also because of the actions of this administration creates increasingly vulnerable situations. Spoiled boys shouldn’t be playing war.
And I keep waiting for elected officials to find their spines to stand up to this stuff and write the ship that is capsized that is our country and democracy. And all they do is talk.
The 25th anniversary of 9/11 falls on the 250th anniversary of this country.
Liberty weeps and so do I.
Remember, 9/11 accurately.
Remember those who lost their lives. Remember the first responders and others from all over not just New York City, who are still alive and struggling with health issues and what not because of what they were exposed to on that fateful day and the days thereafter. Honor all those people and this event by getting your asses to the polls on election day.
It’s time to right the ship of democracy.
To be an American is who we are. We come from all walks of life. We come from all races, creeds, colors, nationalities. We are a nation, literally born of immigrants, and it’s time to start treating those people with respect which means getting rid of the frozen feds.
Be a real patriot, not one that just expects a check from a crazy old man who seems to think that’s what it takes to get people to vote. we all know the phrase. The check is in the mail and if you think he’s gonna pay you anything I can sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.
Well, that’s my rant for the 25th anniversary. As Americans, we have an obligation to be better than what we currently are allowing in this country.
Here are some things to read:
https://www.inquirer.com/sports/west-chester-qb-michael-horrocks-september-11-pilot-20260909.html
https://www.inquirer.com/news/september-11-aniversary-hug-hub-philadelphia-20260909.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-w-bush-911-attacks-condoleezza-rice/
https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/10/us/seventh-moment-of-silence-9-11?cid=ios_app
https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/09/colin-powell-911-democracy/688566/
https://www.inquirer.com/phillies/flag-man-jim-minacci-september-11-25-years-later-20260910.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/9-11-first-responders-care/688554/
https://apnews.com/article/september-11-associated-press-eeacb6c1608413860c2306008b354b89
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/magazine/did-9-11-really-change-everything.html
https://penncapital-star.com/history/remembering-flight-93-through-the-lens-of-healing/