Personal Reflections on 9/11: Firefighter Legacy, Aviation Dreams, Legal Advocacy, Tech Equity, Clergy Response, and Global Perspectives

I was 4½ when my dad died. I have only brief memories of that day. I remember my mom taking my twin brother and me out of preschool. I remember watching the TV at home and then going over to one of her friends’, whose husband was also a firefighter, and watching it there. We were so young, we didn’t really grasp what was actually going on. But as you get older, you start to realize what you’ve missed out on. It’s not quite the same as being sad because you miss someone close to you. It’s more like you’re sad because you didn’t really get to be close to them.

My dad was a cop for 12 years and a firefighter for only 18 months, but joining the FDNY was always his plan. For as long as I can remember, I also wanted to be a firefighter. I did the entry exam when I was 18, even though they don’t take anyone until 21. I went to college, but I think I was just killing time. I dropped out after two years, as the process ramped up. My mom kept encouraging me to consider other things, but she knew I had put all my eggs in that basket. I loved the routine and discipline of the academy, and I really tried to earn my spot; I didn’t want to feel like I was getting special treatment.

A lot of things about the fire department don’t change, and I remember thinking my dad might have stood right where I was standing, worrying about getting yelled at by some drill instructor for having a button undone. I don’t have many shared memories with him, but that came close. He worked in Brooklyn, just on the other side of the tunnel from the World Trade Center. I wanted to go to a different firehouse, to let the guys make up their mind about me without having known his reputation, so I’m in the Bronx. The firefighters I meet that knew him, I feel like they're happy to see that I'm on the job.

On 9/11 I usually go to Mass at my firehouse and then drop by Ladder 101, where Dad worked. Last year for the first time I met someone who was actually riding that day, and he gave me the full rundown. They were staged at the mouth of the tunnel right under the towers, and as they sat there on the rigs, they watched the second plane come in. They could feel the impact and then they went straight in. From what I understand, his group went up a way, came back down, and were in the lobby when the building collapsed.

Do I wish he was still alive? Of course. I sometimes wonder if I’d be different if I’d known my dad. But that event shaped my way of thinking and shaped me. I’m very proud of what he did, and I think it’s a very admirable and honorable way to die. And I wouldn’t want someone else to have been in his place because I don’t think that’s what he would have wanted. –As told to Belinda Luscombe

I took my first discovery flight with an instructor in 2022. At first I was definitely nervous, because there was so much going on in the plane at once. But once we were at around 2,000 feet, everything became incredibly peaceful. Looking down at the scenery gave me a sense of freedom that I never really experienced anywhere else. I knew at a young age that I never wanted to work a traditional nine-to-five job. I was also really big on traveling, and that discovery flight showed me that being a pilot was something I could do every day and enjoy. I took my first solo fight in 2024.

At Middle Georgia State University, I'm enrolled in aviation courses to finish out my remaining ratings and license and also to, as we call it in the industry, time build. I have to get at least 1,000 flight hours before I can go to a regional airline. It will probably take me about six more years of training to become a major airline pilot. African American women make up less than 1% of professional pilots in the U.S. I have had the privilege of connecting with several of them through organizations such as Sisters of the Skies, OBAP, Aviation Career Enrichment, Pink STEM, and Youth in Aviation. Having this support gives me a sense of comfort and understanding that through hard work, I can also achieve it. –As told to Philip Wang

Even at 19, I was on track to study the intersection of human-rights law and international humanitarian law. When it became clear in early October that we, the U.S., were going to strike Afghanistan in a way that seemed not entirely targeted and seemed to conflate the Taliban with al-Qaeda, that began my interest in all this. But to me, our actions didn't seem to comply with the law of war that I had been studying. I really did not anticipate that I would eventually use my specialization to litigate as hard as I possibly could against my own government. But that is what I have done for the past 13ish years in my work at Guantánamo.

I was already working with Guantánamo detainees when, in 2015, I got a call from a friend at the Department of Defense, who said the military commissions, which are prosecuting those actually alleged to have organized the attacks on 9/11, were hiring civilians. He asked if I’d be interested in representing Ammar al-Baluchi, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew. I thought, well, there's nothing I can do that is deeper in the heart of this morass than the military commissions, because the CIA torture programs are at the heart of these cases. So I've been a defense attorney for Ammar al-Baluchi’s 9/11 case since 2015. It has been in pretrial hearings for 14 years.

The 9/11 case really is all day, every day. It is the biggest criminal case in U.S. history. I hold a top-secret security clearance, and I still don’t have all the information I need about the torture at the black sites that impacted how Ammar is today and the statements he gave later. The trial has just been scheduled for June 2028, but I don’t know if it will ever happen, and I think that is a very hard truth, particularly for the victims’ family members. Witnesses have passed away, evidence has been destroyed by the government. The men themselves are deteriorating because the U.S. refuses to give them the medical care they need as undisputed torture victims. Millions and millions of dollars have been wasted on this exercise so far. It’s the Jarndyce v Jarndyce of the United States.

However I also think this is one of the most important things I will ever do because it shows fellow Americans that this is what dissent looks like, and I know it sounds trite, but this is also what patriotism looks like. I am both grateful for and have great contempt for what the Department of Defense has done over these 25 years. On 9/11 I will reach out to the victims’ family members who I am in touch with and convey my very deep sadness and anger over what happened. I will watch the commemorations. I will contemplate. Then I will start speaking again about everything that we are continuing to do wrong. –As told to B.L.

When I got out of the military, all my classmates were going into tech. I was like, If New York is going to become a tech sector, how can more people be included in that? All the soldiers I worked with never went to college. That's the difference between officer and soldier. Even though my platoon sergeant was 20 years older than me, I was in charge because I went to college. It really got you thinking: All these companies and jobs and wealth are being created, but two-thirds of Americans and two-thirds of New Yorkers don’t have a four-year college degree. In 2011, I ended up creating Pursuit. Our idea was to train working-class people in the skills tech companies tell us they need. The average student arrived making $16,000 and a year later has a job paying $94,000.

Perhaps the future is not college versus noncollege. Perhaps it’s going to be AI and non-AI. But hopefully, there’s a way to democratize that and enable cooperation. We're creating these new digital minds, so you have to consider their power and impact. Early on in high school, it was imprinted on me that what’s most important is what happens to all of us. And the ability to have agency in that. 9/11 helped cement that. Important critical junctures really can bring out the best in humanity, if we choose to respond.

I had just dropped my younger son at high school a block away from the Trade Center and I was going into the church office when I saw my secretary outside. She simply says, “Look.” Sure enough, there was a gaping hole in the north tower. I could see what I thought was debris falling. Later on, I discovered it may have been people. I turned around to get my son, but the police wouldn’t let me through, so I went back to the church, and all of a sudden, a sea of people filled with soot and stuff came walking down our street. We opened the church to them. We had four landlines that were somehow still working. Eventually my son walked in with a bunch of friends, all covered in soot. My older son also arrived from midtown. That was a rebirth moment for me. I was able to shift my attention to helping the helpers and healing the healers.

By day two after the collapse, I was doing what I've always done: galvanizing people and starting to help individuals, raising money to pay people's rent and medical bills and for funerals. We established the Ground Zero Clergy Task Force, which was simply clergy of different faiths, denominations, and traditions who gathered together to help at the site and to coordinate churches with FEMA and the New York City government. Every day, anywhere from 15 to 50 clergy would meet in the sanctuary, and then go down to the hole, to ground zero, to see what we could do. About a year afterward, I established a Northeast Clergy Group, which was broader and longer-standing. It tried to run the same program for people at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

We closed those organizations eventually, but through them I saw the importance of not being so rigid or immovable in my theological training. Many religious people, regardless of faith tradition, tend to think that we have the patent on truth. This event broadened my perspective and really challenged me to make that change intellectually and also in my practice. When tragedy strikes, no one cares how much training you have, how many books you have written, how large your congregation is. Because the bottom line is love. I saw a fireman who looked so tired and I asked if I could pray for him. I didn’t ask what he believed first.

One of my greatest concerns today is that there are still people in our congregation and in this community who may qualify for assistance through the 9/11 fund that the federal government set up, but some remain reluctant to apply. They’re more afraid of the system than they are of getting sick. So, more than two decades later, part of our ministry is still helping people understand that the consequences of Sept. 11 did not end on Sept. 11. We are still caring for people. We are still encouraging people to seek the help that is available to them. And we are still learning what that terrible day taught us from the very beginning: when people are hurting, our first responsibility is to love them.

That day, I was working at a bank, and as I went from department to department, they were bringing this up on their computers. On my way home, it’s just a two-lane country road, and there was so much traffic. Cars were passing me in either direction. They were state police cars. When I finally got home, I see my husband picking things out of the yard, and I didn’t know what he was doing until I went to pull into our driveway. It was black, totally black, with small pieces of burnt debris. And it just hit me then what I was looking at. Flight 93 carried mail. We had mail in our trees, in our yard. The neighbor across the road from us had a piece of the United Airlines magazine in her yard.

We started volunteering at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., after my husband had retired from work, like five years after 9/11. People come from all over—Europe, Australia, different countries. They like to tell you where they were and their experiences of that day. And then they always ask, “Where were you when this happened?” We get a lot of school students, and they're very alert to what happened here, so they're usually very quiet and very respectful. My 21-year-old grandson wasn't born yet. And when he was in eighth grade, I think it was, his school came out.

I never get tired of talking about it. Probably 99% of them still feel the pain and show their emotions easily when we're talking. Sometimes it’s a little hard to be there, because I’m that person—I might not be able to say the right thing to you, but I can cry right alongside of you. At the Visitor Center, we have those three phone messages. You know that some of the passengers on Flight 93 had to leave messages because they didn’t get an answer? Those are very powerful.

Can I share one little story with you? This was just after they were done with the excavation and the road opened up. So it was about two weeks later. My husband and I stopped there after work one evening. And it was just like the day of 9/11. Sunny, bright blue sky, not a cloud in the sky. There was nobody around, just me and my husband. We looked down through the field, and you could just see where the crash site was, the fresh soil that covered that area. And we just stood there. And all you could hear were birds, the rustling of the high grass, and just silence. And there wasn't a flag. There was nothing where you would think something like this happened. You could see the little fence that they had around the debris field. But that is a moment that I'll never forget. –As told to Karl Vick

I was going into fifth grade when 9/11 happened. I remember, because it was two days after a famous Northern Alliance commander was assassinated. Obviously, there was no TV in Kabul, but our ears were wide open and we did hear about it on the radio. (From a very young age, I was listening to BBC Persian.) Then came the bombings, and life in Kabul became a bit hard, so for a short period, I went back to my village, Kapisa, which is 100 km from Kabul, where I had shepherding duties. I remember very well the big difference when we returned to school; girls were going too, and we no longer had to wear black turbans. Everybody wanted the Taliban to go, but we didn’t know that eventually all these American soldiers would come and there would be a hot war again. We all thought the Northern Alliance would take over.

My mother died when I was young, and my father really worked to make sure his children did not have to work on the farm. I went to an elite Turkish-run high school; out of 6,000 applicants, only 100 were accepted—and some of those places were reserved for the children of government ministers. Most lessons were in English, but we also learned Turkish. I wanted to go to medical school, but I was young and male and I believed the hype, and in the last year of school I began working with the U.S. Army. I was sent to Kandahar as an interpreter. After I was nearly killed twice, I was tr