September 11, 2026. Never forget.
If technology works the way it is supposed to, this post arrived in your box at 7:46 am (CST) this morning, a significant moment on the clock 25 years ago, as well as today, and for every year on this day going forward.
Never forget.
Twenty-five years ago, in a time before iPhones, I would be awakened each morning by an alarm sounding from the clock/radio on my bedside table. On that early fall Tuesday morning, my alarm went off at 7:30 am (CST). I rolled over and, as was my habit, I reached out and hit the snooze button which gave me an extra nine minutes to drift in and out of dreamland. The alarm rang again at 7:39, I reached to cut it off, and tuned the dial to WSM-AM 650, the “Air Castle of the South,” for The Waking Crew, a daily show featuring live Nashville studio musicians and a guest artist. I was thinking about a beach trip with lifelong friends a few weeks before and a Labor Day gathering of good friends who had been walking me through a rough patch. I was feeling peaceful and grateful and hopeful and…then…the world changed.
“We interrupt our regular scheduled program to bring you a special news report…”
I got out of bed and went to the den, planted myself on my couch, and stared at my only TV. I was alone in my old rambling farmhouse, and I felt strangely unsettled, so I called a friend and asked if he would stay on the phone with me while we both tried to process the unspeakable, unfathomable horror unfolding before our eyes.
With limited information, the morning show hosts: Couric, Lauer, Gumbel, Sawyer, tried to explain what the entire nation was now tuning in to watch in real time, forever marking the date in our collective memory.
I didn’t leave the house all day. Brokaw, Rather and Jennings got us through the first night, but the magnitude of what had happened had barely begun to set in.
My journal entry from 9.13.01:
“There has been a horrible tragedy for the USA over the past few days. Terrorists hijacked four commercial airlines and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center towers, one into the Pentagon, and one in a field in Pennsylvania. The towers collapsed…unbelievable…thousands have likely perished…hundreds of firemen and policeman…it is Armageddon-like. As a nation, we are wounded and very heartbroken. I am physically and emotionally fatigued from the weight of it all. It is hard to comprehend, it seems surreal. This feels like the Pearl Harbor of the baby boomer generation.”
Twenty-five years later, there are moments when what happened still seems almost unbelievable…but it did.
Never forget.
In the days and weeks and months that followed, we grieved as one nation…under God…indivisible.
Never forget.
We saluted the bravery of heroes, great and small, and celebrated countless random acts of kindness among strangers.
Never forget.
And for those we lost, we say their names every year on this date of sacred remembrance.
NEVER FORGET.
“So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart…” (Billy Collins)