As I wrote on last year's anniversary, this is one of those days for our family.

September 11th has always been, and will always be, a gut punch in our family. The day’s events were too personal, too raw, too traumatic. And the rippling ramifications of those horrific hours have spread through our lives for so many years afterwards, leaving indelible, never healing wounds of loss.

And it started as such a gorgeous day, both here in Pensacola – where major dad was still on active duty – and in New York City, where brother Bingley (you all have seen in the comments here) was doing his thing on Maiden Lane, about 2 blocks from the World Trade Center, whose basement, coincidentally, was his train station. But he’d taken the ferry that day, because he was meeting a friend.

…I picked him up at his hotel at 7:30 or so and we caught the 7:55 ferry out of Highlands, which is tucked in behind Sandy Hook, bound for Manhattan. Gosh, did I mention it was a glorious day? We sat on the roof of the ferry, laughing and joking on the cell phone with friends in Brazil as we sped along at 35 knots, the breeze rippling across our clothes. As we neared going under the Verrazano Bridge my friend said “That plane is awfully low.”
And so indeed it was, crossing the mouth of the harbor from west to east at a slow, leisurely pace and turning up the East river. But then we saw another jet follow it a few minutes later and I thought, well, if there were two planes then the controllers must be routing them that way because of the wind. One can rationalize anything, at least then. And yes, I’ve seen all the diagrams and maps of how the various experts say the planes flew that day and none of them mention this, but that’s what I saw.

We got to my office on the very end of Maiden Lane around 8:45 or so. I started looking through my emails and the first one I always read was from my friend Sylvia San Pio, who was a coffee broker at Carr Futures. Her husband, John Resta, also worked at Carr. They had gotten married in August of 2000, and man did we have a blast at their wedding. Sylvia was seven months pregnant with their first child, a boy they were going to name Dylan. I would always kid her that she was condemning him to a life of whiskey drinking, and she would laugh and say that at least they’d get some good poetry out of him.

Carr Futures was on the 92nd floor of the North Tower.

Flight 11 hit the 94th floor.

I have always thought, as AMERICANS, it would be one of those days - one of those horrific but galvanizing days - that whatever our differences would always bind our AMERICAN spirits together. We still Remember Pearl Harbor even though there are a scanty few alive who actually do, God bless them.

Never Forget 9-11 still rings fresh to my ears, my heart, my very being as an AMERICAN.

Most of us watched it happen in real-time. So many of us experienced some tangible sense of the horror either because we lived close or had friends or relatives there. It was enough that we were AMERICANS and were being attacked on our own soil.

This day of days, as my friend calls it, is one of those days that strikes a chord in AMERICAN hearts.

Day of Days.
I lived just south--a bedroom county for NYC and Wall St.. We lost 150 people that morning, and the smoke drifted overhead for days. The funerals went on for over a month as they found them. pic.twitter.com/C7SIrMP01n

— mallen2024 (@mallen20243) September 11, 2024

That chord when hearing any part of the bells tolling at Ground Zero as family and friends strive to read the names of the fallen and the heroes who tried so desperately to save them without tears choking them from speaking those names.

The agony is still etched on faces twenty-three years later.

The silence.

One of those days, no matter how removed in years, that the quiet chirping of birds in that gentle field in Shanksville doesn't flood one's eyes immediately remembering the courage of the AMERICANS on that fateful flight. Who didn't hesitate to roll when the choice was saving their fellow countrymen.

This day guts me every year #NeverForget911 🇺🇸💔 https://t.co/xnay2RDSeQ

— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) September 11, 2024

AMERICANS united by the thought of the gaping, fiery, smoking wound at the heart of the Pentagon, whose breath can't help but catch at the beauty of our flag rolling gracefully over the once scarred facade, eternally consecrated by the innocent blood of those within and on Flight 77.

JUST IN - American flag unfurled at Pentagon #NeverForget #September11

pic.twitter.com/GA9nML0G70

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) September 11, 2024

Our AMERICAN flag.

The ferocious response in the middle of the carnage.

And the signs all around that gave us hope.

The “Cross at Ground Zero,” discovered in the ruins of 6 World Trade Center on Sept. 13, 2001, signifying our nation's only hope. #september11th pic.twitter.com/jNpwOcQVgm

— Georgian Banov (@GeorgianBanov) September 11, 2024

The heroes of that day ran through tunnels to get there, fearlessly charged back into the buildings...

Mike Kehoe running up the north tower of the World Trade Center. Photo by John Labriola. pic.twitter.com/XjoZbAEl8v

— James Brun (@LeBrunJames81) September 11, 2021

...and helped workers down the pitch-black stairwells. 

But never again emerged themselves.

Everyday folks had the presence of mind to do something as simple and decent as helping co-workers down staircases and over rubble instead of just looking out for themselves. Or Bingley handing out coffee filters for his fellow office workers to hold over their noses. Something to breathe through as they evacuated in the toxic, roiling dust clouds of the Trade Center's collapse.

So many AMERICAN stories because even if they'd come from somewhere else to be here, that reaction to adversity is 100% red, white, and blue.

Did you know that over 300 search and rescue dogs were deployed to Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks? These brave pups worked tirelessly to locate survivors and recover remains. Their incredible sense of smell and unwavering dedication made them invaluable in the face of… pic.twitter.com/4UDPsmQqnV

— ultimatedoghq (@ultimatedoghq) September 11, 2024

My AMERICAN heart embraces them all, mourns our losses because every life belonged to all of us, and honors the courage of those who boldly faced the worst that day and those who went back into the rubble for months afterward.

My AMERICAN heart has no room for equivocation or forgiveness. 

Nor will it ever.

If only the comity of the shared horror, the shared purpose, the shared fury that someone dared breach our home in the most cowardly of fashions while exacting such a ghastly toll could have held as long as that for Pearl Harbor.

Lives are so soft today. It's the only explanation I have for the unthinkable appearing in city streets and in the reconstructed WTC itself without any pushback, all while claiming the moral imperative.

They're picking up where their jihadist comrades left off 23 years ago.

— Izengabe (@Izengabe_) March 9, 2024

Encouraged and enabled by one of the major political parties in this country and tacitly endorsed by the administration currently in power.

Lives are soft.

Lives lost are quickly and expediently forgotten in some weaker-willed and - yeah, I'll say it - less AMERICAN quarters.

Last night, Harris said that the January 6th protest was worse than 9/11.

On the eve of 9/11.

Disgraceful. pic.twitter.com/fMNNtqP6gF

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 11, 2024

These quarters only have two gears - they move in the dark to lie and gain advantage, to act and bring terror, or they gather in mobs and feed their violent urges through mass intimidation and thuggery.

Because there are no consequences for their vicious flights of fancy, be it swooning over Bin Laden's writing as if he were Kahlil Gibran instead of the mass-murdering psychopath he was. Or parading with Hamas flags, the group who thinks nothing of slaughtering babies, raping and starving hostages, and burning grandparents alive in their own homes.

Not in our house. 

Ever.

...The bastards. Oh, God – the visceral anger is as fresh this moment as it was 22 years ago.

What Bin Laden started that day has continued taking its toll.

My father was a Gulfstream instructor and had had 2 Saudi pilots scheduled for that day who didn’t show up for their sessions. Daddy called the FBI, but they never contacted him to follow up. He never did see the students.

It tore her heart out, Kcruella said – the hundreds of cars parked at bus station and subway transit lots whose owners were never coming home from the city to pick them up. Month after lonely month, until they were finally towed off.

The Benghazi attacks.

The cancers, chronic illnesses, and injuries, mental and physical, still stealing lives from the toxicity which enveloped and permeated the site.

Kcruella would lose her only child and our precious nephew to a suicide bomber at Bagram Air Base 15 years later, thanks to this day. We admit to sleepless nights counting the hours until our Ebola was home safely from that same cursed airfield in Afghanistan.

Not in our house, ever.

This day, September 11th, this God-awful day of days, will remain forever both a heartrending moment frozen in time and a reminder of how God-damned special we AMERICANS are. 

The streets and the rhetoric at this very moment are a warning of how close we are to losing it all.

We will always remember.

#NeverForget

#SemperFi

God bless America.