"9/11 - 25 Years On"

 The first photo is of my wife, our son (born September 11, 1966) and me. I love the way my wife and son look at one another. The second (borrowed from the Internet) is the moment the second plane hit the South Tower.

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“9/11 – 25 Years On!”

September 11, 2026

 

“Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11^th.

We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives

in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.”

                                                                                                George W. Bush, President

                                                                                                Address to the UN General Assembly

                                                                                                November 10, 2001

 

September 11^th has long been meaningful to Caroline and me, for it was the day our first child was born in 1966. It was a Sunday. I drove my wife to Hartford Hospital in late morning, depositing her into the hands of obstetrician Dr. Charles Hamlin. He told me to go home and await the baby’s arrival. I watched the New York Giants tie the Pittsburg Steelers, 34-34. At 10:56pm our son, Sydney, was born.

 

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Thirty-five years later I was sitting at my desk at the New York institutional research and trading firm of Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. Son Sydney, his wife and their six-month old son were based in London where he worked for Deutsche Bank. However, they had flown to New York the previous Friday to celebrate his 35^th birthday. They had spent the weekend with us in Old Lyme. That Monday our son spent the day in Boston on business, then flew to New York that evening. Our daughter was at home with her 14-month-old daughter; her husband was in his New York office. Our youngest son and his wife were at their offices in the City. She had flown in early on the 11th from Buffalo. We all worked in midtown. 

 

News is the feedstock for trading desks; so while we all had our eyes on our computers, Bloomberg and CNBC kept us up. When we heard that American Airlines Flight 11, bound for Los Angeles from Boston, crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46am, my immediate reaction was that it had to have been a small plane or helicopter. But seventeen minutes later when United Airlines flight 175, also from Logan and on its way to L.A., hit the South Tower we all knew we were being attacked. And, of course, a half hour later when we heard that American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon and when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania most of us were stupefied. The enormity of what had happened was difficult to process. And as an example of how we are victims of fate, our son Sydney was ticketed on UAL Flight 93 for the next day.

 

My first reaction was to check on our family. While we all worked in Midtown, we often visited clients in Lower Manhattan, including the World Trade Center. Our oldest son was still in his Midtown hotel room. Everyone else was in their office. My wife was driving, with our daughter-in-law and her six-months old son, to our daughter’s home in Rye, New York. I suggested they turn back, but she wanted us to be together. 

 

The stock exchange never opened that day. (It re-opened Monday, September 17, down 7.13% from its close on September 10. It took two months to recover to where it had been.) While the exact timelines of my activity have been lost to the mist of memory, I know that morning was spent fielding calls from clients across the country and around the world. Son Sydney came to my office and at some point we joined those walking north up Third Avenue, some covered with ash. We stopped at Weill-Cornell Medical Center on East 68^th Street to donate blood and then walked to our small apartment on East 64^th Street. My son-in-law walked three miles to 125^thStreet to catch a train back to Rye. Our younger son and his wife – she six-months pregnant with their first child – walked 40 blocks to their apartment in the East 80s.

 

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The only comparable attack on our nation (apart from the Revolution and the War of 1812) was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, then home to the Pacific Fleet. Three years and nine months later Japan unconditionally surrendered. Amazingly, twenty-five years after Pearl Harbor Japan was the fourth largest economy in the world (West Germany was third) and was the United States’ second largest trading partner. 

 

This attack on our homeland was not conducted by a country or nation. It was a religious war that involved fanatics. The nineteen radicalized Islamists came from Saudi Arabia (15), United Arab Emirates (2), Egypt (1) and Lebanon (1). Most were trained in Afghanistan. The United States, with its emphasis on individual freedom, openness toward religion and equal treatment of women, is alien to the beliefs of Islamic extremists. Wars of religion are more difficult to combat, as Israel well knows, and as do Christians living in Nigeria and Buddhists living in what was once Tibet, now an autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China.

 

In contrast to the war with Germany and Japan, there has never been closure with al-Qaeda and the Taliban terrorists who took the lives of 2,977 civilians that day, including 415 first responders. Wars in the Middle East persist, and the Taliban control Afghanistan today, acting as its de facto government. While Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, along with his successor Ayman al-Zawahiri eleven years later, al-Qaeda remains an “active and transnational network with an estimated 25,000 fighters worldwide – a significant increase in its numbers since 2001,” per the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, September 9, 2025.

 

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Everyone over the age of 35 knows where they were on the morning of September 11, 2001. It is a date, as President Bush said, we will never forget. The targets were not military personnel or facilities. The 19 Islamic terrorists wanted to kill civilians. We will always mourn those who died that day and have compassion for the families and friends they left behind. We wish there could be closure. But for Caroline and me 9/11 is also the birth date in 1966 of our first child, and for that we are eternally grateful.

 

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“Hello God, are You out there?

Can You hear us, are You listening anymore?

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This is no way to be living.

We’re in great need of Your love.”

 

                                                                                                      “Hello God,” 

                                                                                                      Dolly Parton (1946-2026)