Twenty-Four Years Later: Standing at the 9/11 Memorial

Published by:

Kent Brooks

September 10, 2025

On the eve of the 24th anniversary of 911 I find myself returning—in memory and in photographs—to the plaza where the twin waterfalls fall into absence and One World Trade rises in defiant light. I’ve had the good fortune to visit the 9/11 Memorial a couple of times while traveling to New Jersey for software work. Each visit brings me back to the same place: the memory of walking into my office in Altus, Oklahoma on the morning of September 11, 2001—and realizing, along with the rest of America, that everything had changed.

On one New Jersey trip, a software partner and friend who’d lived through that day walked me around Lower Manhattan and shared a story I’ll always remember. His wife worked near the Trade Center. She was eight months pregnant, with their two-year-old in tow, catching the ferry from Hoboken when the first plane hit. The ferry paused, then kept toward Manhattan—until the second impact. She was walking toward her building up until that point. Panicked and running back toward the ferry, she fell. Then several strangers scooped her up, carried her and the little one, and got her back aboard. It was a true women and children first moment. She made the first boat back to Hoboken. With cell service down, my friend was racing up and down the the New Jersey waterfront not knowing if she was alive. By grace—and by the everyday heroism of strangers—she was.

Those NYPD and FDNY men and women, the ferry crews, the passersby who didn’t hesitate—heroes, all of them. Twenty-four years later, we still owe them our gratitude and our memory. Here are some photos he sent me from earlier this week

My friend sen this picture. You can only see one of the beams in this one, but the Tribute in Light is an annual memorial art installation at the World Trade Center site, where twin blue beams of light shine from Lower Manhattan to honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks. The 88 high-powered searchlights are arranged to replicate the shape and orientation of the original Twin Towers, reaching four miles into the sky and visible from up to 60 miles away. This powerful and iconic tribute debuted six months after the attacks and continues every year on September 11, serving as a symbol of remembrance and the city’s enduring spirit

A place built to remember—and to rise

The Memorial itself occupies roughly half of the 16-acre World Trade Center site. Two vast waterfalls and reflecting pools sit in the exact footprints of the Twin Towers—each nearly an acre in size—where water sheets down dark stone walls and disappears into a square void at the center. The names of those lost are inscribed around the edges, a roll call of lives that meant the world to someone. The sound is constant and low, like a city’s heartbeat.

Nearby, One World Trade Center rises above it all. It is, to my eyes, steel-and-glass proof of a national promise: you’re not going to keep us down. From its heights you can look back across the memorial and out toward New Jersey—the same water that carried so many to safety that morning—and you feel both sorrow and resolve at once.

What these visits ask of us

Every September, we say “Never Forget.” The Memorial demands more than a slogan. It asks us to remember faces and names. It asks us to honor quiet acts of courage. It asks us to teach our kids what happened and why it matters. And it nudges us, gently but firmly, to be the kind of people who lift when someone falls.

I’ll include a few photos from my visits with this piece. They don’t capture everything—no picture can—but I hope they invite a moment of reflection. For those of us living far from Lower Manhattan in the American West, the obligation is the same as for those who pass the pools every day: remember, be grateful, and carry the story forward.

“We need to not forget what happened to our country that day.”