Do You Remember September 12?

By Julie Bolejack

Today marks 25 years since September 11, 2001.

Twenty-five years.

It hardly seems possible.

Today there will be countless remembrances, as there should be. We will see the photographs again. We will hear the names. We will remember the firefighters climbing stairs while everyone else was trying to get down. We will remember police officers, paramedics, office workers, airline passengers, families waiting for phone calls that never came.

Many of us will remember exactly where we were when we heard.

And once again, we will say:

Never forget.

But on this 25th anniversary, I find myself thinking about something slightly different.

I’m thinking about September 12.

Do You Remember September 12?

A few months after the attacks, in December 2001, I took my husband, Dale, to New York City for his first visit.

It was a very different New York.

The attacks weren’t history yet. They weren’t documentaries or museum exhibits or photographs in schoolbooks.

They had just happened.

The grief was still there. The shock was still there. You could feel that something enormous had happened to this city and to the people who lived there.

And yet something else was there, too.

Humanity.

In the days and weeks following September 11, we witnessed extraordinary acts of courage and kindness.

First responders ran toward unimaginable danger.

People stood in lines to donate blood.

Restaurants fed rescue workers.

Strangers opened their homes.

People searched for the missing, comforted grieving families, raised money, carried supplies, hung American flags and asked neighbors they barely knew:

Are you okay?

For a little while, something happened to us.

The things that normally divided us seemed smaller.

We weren’t Republicans and Democrats first.

We weren’t red states and blue states.

We weren’t arguing about every difference between us.

We were simply people who had witnessed something terrible happen to other human beings.

And we hurt for one another.

I don’t want to romanticize that period. Fear sometimes brought out the worst in us, too. Muslim Americans and others were subjected to suspicion, hatred and violence. And the decisions our country made in the years afterward deserve their own complicated reckoning.

But alongside all of that was something undeniably beautiful.

People showed up for one another.

And that leads me to the question I keep returning to today:

We promised we would never forget the people we lost. But did we forget the people we briefly became?

When Memory Becomes History

There is something especially significant about this 25th anniversary.

For more and more Americans, September 11 isn’t a memory.

It’s history.

Millions of people alive today were not yet born when the towers fell. Millions more were babies or young children.

They don’t remember watching television that morning.

They don’t remember the confusion of those first reports.

They don’t remember trying desperately to reach someone by telephone.

They don’t remember watching those towers come down and realizing, almost instantaneously, that the world had changed.

Those of us who do remember have a responsibility to tell them what happened.

But perhaps we should tell them about September 12, too.

Tell them about the firefighters.

Tell them about the passengers of Flight 93.

Tell them about the ordinary people who became extraordinary because another human being needed help.

Tell them about strangers carrying strangers.

Tell them about handwritten signs offering food and shelter.

Tell them about people standing in line to give blood simply because they desperately wanted to do something.

Tell them that in one of America’s darkest hours, there was also tremendous light.

Maybe “Never Forget” Means This, Too

After 25 years, perhaps “Never Forget” can mean something more than remembering the tragedy.

Maybe it can also mean remembering the lesson.

We are capable of extraordinary compassion.

We are capable of courage.

We are capable of putting aside differences.

We are capable of seeing the humanity in a stranger.

We are capable of helping someone without first asking how they voted, where they worship, what they believe, where they came from or whether they agree with us.

We know this because we’ve done it.

And that leaves me with a question that feels particularly important today:

Why does it so often take catastrophe to remind us?

Why should buildings have to fall before we recognize our common humanity?

Why should tragedy have to strike before we check on our neighbors?

Why should we wait until someone’s worst day to become our best selves?

Perhaps the most meaningful way to honor September 11 isn’t only to look backward.

Perhaps it is to carry something forward.

So today, I remember September 11.

I remember those who went to work and never came home.

I remember the families whose lives changed forever.

I remember the firefighters climbing those stairs.

I remember the police officers, paramedics, rescue workers, passengers and ordinary people who discovered extraordinary courage within themselves.

And I remember walking through New York with Dale that December, when the wound was still fresh and the city was learning how to breathe again.

But on this 25th anniversary, I’m remembering something else, too.

I’m remembering September 12.

Because perhaps “Never Forget” should mean more than remembering what happened to us.

Perhaps it should also mean remembering who we are capable of being.

And tomorrow, when September 11 has passed and the memorial programs are over, the photographs disappear from our social media feeds and another ordinary day begins, maybe that’s when the real challenge starts.

To remember on September 12.

And September 13.

And September 14.

And on all the ordinary days when no tragedy is forcing us to remember that we belong to one another.

Maybe that’s how we truly never forget.

Thank you, as always, for spending a few minutes with me here at Julie’s Journal—and especially for being here with me today.

If this reflection speaks to you, I hope you’ll share it with someone who might need the reminder. And if you’re new here, I invite you to subscribe and join me for the conversations still to come.

Until next time,

Julie Bolejack, MBA

Stay curious. Stay thoughtful. Keep blooming.

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Displaying our framed photo from that trip to NYC