In the Spirit of Service: Remembering 9/11, Twenty-five Years Later

What I remember most is how we answered.

I remember…

I remember coming into work a little late that morning, around 8:55. I am usually at my desk by 8:30, but that day I was running behind, probably from getting a child to school who had missed the bus. I had just walked into my office and was shuffling files across my desk when one of my case managers, Ruby, came in and asked if I had heard about the plane that crashed into one of the towers. Her face was flushed, her eyes wide. She had seen the replay on the news and could not believe it. The television was on in the board room across the hall, the big one on rollers that we only wheeled out for meetings.

I remember walking over. A couple of others were already watching, talking about what a tragedy it was. “I wonder did the pilot have a heart attack,” one of them said. “Something must have happened. Those poor people, good Lord.” I stood there stunned, shook my head, and said a prayer as I walked back to my office, my mind already pulled back to the duties of the day. My sister called about the terrible accident in New York. “I know, it’s crazy, right,” I said. We talked another minute and hung up, both of us returning to our work.

That’s when I heard it. “Oh my God, what is happening!” Ruby ran into my office.

“Another plane!”

People gathered in the board room, drawn by her shout, and then all of us stood there, paralyzed by what was on the screen. When I heard the broadcaster, I knew. This was no accident. This was war.

Something had changed, and it would never change back.

Nearly thirty minutes later, the President confirmed our worst fears. Then came word that another plane had struck the Pentagon. And still later, the fourth plane went down in Pennsylvania. By then, people were panicking, realizing the danger was not far away but here, and no one knew how far it would reach. I lived in New Jersey. Would we be next? Parents wanted their children close. I know I did.

But what came next was nothing short of amazing.

I worked at a social service agency whose mission was to strengthen individuals and families. On that day, and in the weeks that followed, that is exactly what we did. From our leadership on down, we pulled together, and the people of New Jersey offered what they had to the people of New York. Our agency sent therapists north to sit with families grieving their loved ones. We opened our doors to grief counselors and to anyone in our own community carrying loss. So many people lived on one side of that river and worked on the other that the sorrow did not stop at any state line. My agency sat in South Jersey, and we were no less touched by it.

I have never, before or since, seen the country come together quite the way it did then. It remains one of the greatest examples I have witnessed in my lifetime of people pulling together to help one another. Firefighters and emergency medical crews from New Jersey and from every corner of the nation ran toward the danger the rest of us were fleeing, and many of them laid down their lives doing it. There is no greater love than that. In those extraordinary acts of service, the person who needed help did not first have to prove their worthiness to receive it. Skin color, status, income, education, celebrity, none of it mattered when someone was trapped beneath rubble, grieving a loved one or simply needed someone to hold them up. People saw need and responded to it. What mattered was that you were an American, and this had touched us all. When Whitney Houston’s rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, first sung at the 1991 Super Bowl, returned to the charts that fall and climbed to number six, the proceeds went to relief funds for New York’s firefighters and police. Even a song became an act of service.

As a veteran, and as an American, I was proud of how we carried one another.

But service always has a cost, and I have watched friends pay it. When our troops were sent overseas, some of the people I served with in the Army, and some I had known since childhood, did not come home. Others came back, but not the same. I think of the ones who returned carrying wounds you could see and wounds you could not, who lost their hearing, their health, and in some cases their families. Their sacrifice is folded into this story, too. For thousands of service members and their families, the story of September 11 did not end when the smoke cleared over New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. In many ways, it was just beginning.

This is only my story. Everyone who lived through that day carries their own. And then there are my younger children, born in 2006, who carry none of it firsthand. They know 9/11 the way they know any history, from books, photographs, video and from what they have been told. The charge for those of us who were here is to help them never forget something they were not there to see. 

So how do we ask a generation to “Never Forget” something they were not there to remember?

We do that by telling our stories, sharing our memories, by passing down our firsthand accounts. We tell them not only about the horror, but about the solidarity that rose out of the ashes. We say the names of the 2,977 people who perished, keeping their memory alive. We tell them who they were, how they lived and what others did in their final moments to try to save them.

We keep their stories alive by telling ours.

Our own Delaware State family was not spared. A Hornet, Keith A. Glascoe, a 1985 graduate of Delaware State University, answered the call that morning as a New York City firefighter and did not come home. Others who knew him will tell his story far better than I can, and it deserves that fuller telling. I will only say that a life given in the act of saving others is the truest picture of what I am trying to name here.

What the enemy meant to destroy, they could not. The Twin Towers came down and would not rise again as they had stood before, but what stands in their place, over the ashes and the rubble and the memories laid to rest, is more than the destroyers ever counted on. What stands is the resilience of a people who learned again how to build together, to help each other, to encourage each other, to hold space for one another and stand strong. That is our charge: to keep on in that spirit. And though our minds may never release the images of that terrible day, may our hearts hold just as tightly to the spirit of service that answered it.

Twenty-five years later, I remember the television on rollers. I remember Ruby running into my office. I remember my sister’s phone call. I remember the fear of wondering what might happen next. But I also remember what happened next.

We served.

And perhaps that is one of the most important things we can pass to the generations who cannot remember September 11 for themselves.

And in the name of that spirit…

This year, on the 25th anniversary, the Department of Veterans Affairs and its National Cemetery Administration have partnered with the nonprofit Carry The Load for a National Day of Service and Remembrance on Saturday, September 12, 2026. At more than 140 national and state veterans cemeteries, volunteers will clean and beautify headstones, among them the resting places of forty-seven veterans and dependents who died as a result of the 9/11 attacks and are buried or memorialized in VA national cemeteries. More information can be found on the Department of Veterans Affairs National Day of Service webpage, or feel free to register through Carry The Load’s Patriot Day page. 

But please, I implore you, whether through this campaign or somewhere else, find ways to serve.

Because remembrance is good. But remembrance that moves our hands is better.

This, my friends, is how we never forget.

With deep respect and solidarity,

Lolita Treadwell
Director for DSU Dover AFB (DAFB)
Veteran, US Army