Twenty-five Years

Twenty-five years ago today, I was at work at Farmers Telecommunications, helping a coworker with a computer problem. Just another Tuesday. Then it wasn’t. 

I remember the commotion. I remember hearing confused voices and seeing folks gathered around the one television hanging near our cooperative’s front entrance. I remember the replay of the first tower, and then watching the second impact, live, right in front of us. And then, images of the burning Pentagon and later video of the crash site in Pennsylvania. I remember the confusion, the anger, the grief, the fear. 

I remember praying for the servicemen and women who walked into buildings everyone else was running out of, into what they had to know was likely certain death, so someone else could live. I remember our nation’s symbol of security under attack. I remember, “Let’s roll.” 

I remember red, white, and blue on nearly every business and every home. I remember packed pews and broken hearts. I remember the prayers. I remember the unity. I remember the resilience. I remember the hope. Most of all, I remember. May we never forget. 

I was 26 years old that day. Twenty-five years later, I still remember it like it was an hour ago, and if you were old enough that day, I’d bet you can too. You know exactly where you stood, who you were with, what you felt. Those images are burned into our memory for good. There was life before September 11th, and there’s been life after. Everything changed. 

We still feel it, a quarter-century later. Air travel means more security than it used to, and a lot of us carry a low-level caution we don’t even notice anymore. On the footprint of those towers in New York, there’s sacred ground now holding thousands of names: fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, friends. Every name is a family that’s still grieving. 

But something else came out of that terrible day. That evening, members of Congress stood on the Capitol steps and sang “God Bless America,” unscripted. For a moment, we weren’t Republicans or Democrats. We were just Americans, bonded by grief and steadied by solidarity. By the next morning, flags were flying everywhere — porches, car antennas, church lawns, office parking lots. Strangers made eye contact on the street and understood each other: we were grieving together, and we were going to get through it together. 

And then there were the first responders who ran into the buildings everyone else was running out of. They sifted through the rubble for days, first looking for survivors, then for remains. Many gave everything they had, and some gave their lives. A lot of them are still paying for that work today through respiratory illness and other lasting health problems. They’re heroes, every one of them. 

That’s what I don’t want us to lose 25 years later — not the fear, but the unity. Not the grief, but what we did with it. So today, I’m asking three things of us, myself included. 

First, take a real moment of silence. Step away from your inbox, your desk, whatever’s got your attention, and just sit in the quiet for a minute. Let yourself remember. 

Second, do something good for somebody else. It doesn’t have to be big. Buy a coworker’s coffee. Tell somebody you appreciate them. Hug someone you love and say the words out loud. Small kindness, multiplied by enough people, is exactly the kind of force this day should remind us we’re capable of. 

Third, pray. Pray for a renewed unity in our nation. Pray for our leaders. Pray for our neighbors. Pray that we’d be influenced by truth and life more than algorithms and likes.  

Let’s remember. And let’s be doers that make life better today.  

We will never forget, 

Chris