Fifteen years ago, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I wrote about that awful day and how it unfolded for me. Today, 25 years later, I went back and read what I wrote.
So much has changed. And yet so much of that day remains as clear to me as if it happened yesterday.
One strange thing I had never told anyone before writing that original post happened the night of September 10, 2001.
I was walking near Rockefeller Center when it suddenly started pouring. I ducked into the closest place I could find—the FDNY Fire Zone, a learning center that taught visitors about the dangers of fire, how quickly it could spread and how an escape plan could save your life.
I spent about half an hour there waiting out the rain, learning about the horrors of being trapped in a fire.
I had no idea that a little more than twelve hours later I would witness the most devastating day of my lifetime and watch hundreds of firefighters run directly toward the very thing the rest of us would instinctively run from.
The next morning I arrived at my office at 225 West 34th Street. Freddy, our building superintendent, told me a plane had hit the World Trade Center. In my mind, I pictured a small twin-engine plane.
I took the elevator upstairs. When I walked into the office, someone told me another plane had hit the second tower.
We turned on the radio. The DJ said America was under attack.
I remember people gathering around that radio in my office, listening to reports of other planes still in the air and other possible targets. I felt completely helpless. Frightened. Shocked.
Until that moment, growing up in America, the idea that we could be attacked like this had never really entered my mind. This was the United States, for God’s sake.
For me, and I think for millions of Americans, 9/11 was the end of a certain innocence. The unimaginable had happened. From that moment forward, you understood that nothing was guaranteed.
A group of us went onto the roof of our building. The sky was that unforgettable perfect blue. We had a clear view of downtown and could see the smoke pouring from both towers.
We stood there watching, not even thinking about the fact that we were in the shadow of the Empire State Building—another potential target.
And then I watched each tower fall.
Even 25 years later, I can close my eyes and see it.
For years, when I thought about 9/11, one of the first images that came to mind was of the people trapped above the impact zones. People standing in broken windows hundreds of feet above the ground, faced with an impossible choice. I still have difficulty looking at those photographs.
But as I’ve gotten older, another part of 9/11 affects me even more.
The families.
I was 30 years old then. I now understand marriage, children, watching your kids grow up, family dinners, birthdays, graduations and all those seemingly ordinary moments that turn out to be the most important moments of our lives.
Nearly 3,000 people didn’t get those years.
And their spouses, parents and children had to live those years without them.
Today I see the children of firefighters, police officers and other first responders who were killed that day. Many are now adults, some with children of their own. They grew up without a mother or father because their parent went to work one morning and, when people desperately needed help, ran toward danger instead of away from it.
That hits me differently at this age than it did at 30.
The courage of the FDNY, NYPD, PAPD and every first responder that day is almost impossible to comprehend. So is the courage of ordinary people helping strangers, and the passengers of Flight 93 who, after learning what was happening, decided they weren’t going to sit back and allow another target to be struck.
“Let’s roll.”
Those words still say so much about that day.
At my gym, where I’ve been a member since 1999 and, incredibly, still am there have long been photographs near the basketball court of two guys who used to play in our pickup games. Both died in the towers. They were about my age. The photo’s have been gone for years.
When I wrote about them ten years after 9/11, I wondered what I would tell them if they somehow walked back into that gym.
Back then I wrote about iPhones, iPads and social media. An African American had become President. The Red Sox had finally won the World Series. The Saints had won the Super Bowl. Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were gone. New stadiums had risen all over New York.
Now another 15 years have passed.
Imagine trying to explain everything that has happened since.
A global pandemic shut down New York and much of the world. Technology has transformed our lives again. We’ve seen incredible breakthroughs and terrible wars. Children born after 9/11 are now adults. The skyline of lower Manhattan has risen again.
And somehow, despite everything that has happened in the world over these 25 years, the New York Jets STILL haven’t made it back to the Super Bowl.
Some things apparently really are unimaginable.
But the two guys on that gym wall missed all of it.
That’s what stays with me.
They didn’t just lose September 12, 2001. They lost 25 years of ordinary Tuesdays. Twenty-five Christmases and Thanksgivings. Twenty-five summers. Friendships they never got to make. Children they never got to watch grow up. Weddings, vacations, ballgames, laughter, arguments, accomplishments and thousands of completely unremarkable days that those of us lucky enough to still be here sometimes take for granted.
And their families lost those years with them.
There is something else I remember about the days after 9/11: New York came together.
Race, religion, politics, neighborhoods—none of it seemed to matter very much. American flags were everywhere. Strangers talked to each other. People lined the West Side Highway cheering firefighters and rescue workers heading downtown.
We were New Yorkers. We were Americans. We had been attacked, and we were together.
That memory makes today’s divisions especially painful for me.
I strongly disagree with much of the politics and rhetoric surrounding our current mayor, and I find some of the people he has associated with deeply troubling particularly someone who once said America “deserved” 9/11. As a New Yorker who witnessed that day, these associations still matter to me.
Mayors and politicians come and go. New York is bigger than any one of them.
My family has called this city home for more than a century. No politician gets to define what New York means to me or diminish what happened here on September 11, 2001.
Twenty-five years later, what I wrote at 30 means even more to me now:
Nothing is guaranteed.
Life is incredibly fragile.
So celebrate it. Love your family. Hug your kids. Call your friends. Appreciate the ordinary days. Be grateful for the things we complain about because simply being here to complain about them is itself a gift.
And never forget the people who went to work on a beautiful blue September morning and never came home.
Never forget the firefighters and police officers who climbed those stairs while everyone else was coming down.
Never forget the passengers and crew of Flight 93.
Never forget the families who have carried their loss for 25 years.
And never forget what this city looked like when, at its darkest moment, New Yorkers stood together.
9/11/01. Twenty-five years gone. Never forgotten.
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Robert Tuchman is CEO of Amaze Media Labs and a lifelong New Yorker.