09/04/2026
"First semester, freshman year, 8:00 am (CST) College Algebra. A friend, Austin Stewart, walked in a few minutes late. He sat down in front of me, turned around, and said, 'Someone flew a plane into one of the Twin Towers!' We assumed it was an accident. 'How did the pilot not see the building?'
I sat in class for 50 minutes completely oblivious to how the events unfolding in NY, DC, and PA would shape the first decades of my generation’s adult life. That class was the last time in my life that terms like Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Bin Laden, and Afghanistan were completely foreign and irrelevant to me. Now, twenty-five years later, I know much more about those terms than I ever knew about algebra.
In some ways, it is hard to believe twenty-five years have passed since a day that seemed so unreal as it unfolded. At the same time, as I sit here in DC, that day and the world I knew on the morning of September 11, 2001, seem like multiple lifetimes ago. I was honored to serve in the military beside men and women in the States and in Afghanistan who made incredible sacrifices for our nation. Many of them spent 10-plus years away from friends and families. Thousands of others paid the ultimate sacrifice, making their final trip home in flag-draped coffins.
It is too easy for us, even those of us who served in the military, to go about our daily lives without giving any thought to the sacrifices that have been made by a generation of service members and their families. Looking back, that algebra class represents the exact moment an entire generation moved from innocence to responsibility. Thousands of young Americans had their lives cut short before they had the opportunity to set foot in a college class. Twenty-five years later, this world is unrecognizable from the one I knew on the morning of September 11th.
Yet, amidst all the change, one truth remains absolute: we should live in a way that honors the sacrifices of so many of our fellow citizens. To the victims of that tragic morning and the thousands of heroes who fell in the decades of warfare that followed, your sacrifice is forever etched into the soul of this country. We honor you. We remember you."
- Chris Sanders, Student, M.A. in Theology
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We're sharing remembrances we've collected from individuals impacted by the terrorist attack on 9/11/2001, as a complement to the 2026 Jeanie Poole O'Shaughnessy Memorial Lecture. Follow along these next few days as we bring to the fore our collective memories of this day, and how its impacts are still felt.
