"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)

"Keeping Busy...But Slowing Down"

 The Photo – It may look like I am asleep, but I am busy checking my eyelids for holes!

 

Wishing you a happy (and busy) Labor Day weekend!

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Keeping Busy...But Slowing Down”

September 5, 2026

 

“Keep busy at something; a busy person never has time to be unhappy.”

                                                 Attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

 

Shortly after retiring as a stockbroker at the end of 2015, we moved to Essex Meadows. I had no place to go that first Monday morning. I awoke exhilarated – the day ahead was mine to do as I chose. But that feeling soon wore off. I had to keep busy. Essex Meadows offers residents many choices: Bridge and Mahjong, lectures and trips, croquet and bocce, music and committee memberships. There are art classes and writing groups. As well, surrounded by Essex Meadows’ hundred acres, and a thousand more in the adjacent Preserve, there are several paths on which to walk. There is no reason to be idle.

 

Early on, I walked each morning to Walgren’s to get the paper, and Caroline and I hiked many of the trails. But writing became my focus. Better than just keeping busy, writing allows me to be creative. Around 2000, while working as a stockbroker, and with the dot.com bubble percolating, I began to write a market note. About the same time, I started writing personal essays, which were collected in a book published in 2014, One Man’s Family. A second, Notes from Old Lyme, was published in 2016. In early 2008 I had begun writing more political essays, which I called ‘Thoughts of the Day.’ And in 2017 I began writing short essays on books I enjoyed, which I called ‘Burrowing into Books.’ Writing appealed. It was a means of passing on to my grandchildren something of myself but also provided the challenge of writing – having words say what I wanted them to say. My guiding light has been E.B. White’s Rule 17 from Elements of Style: “Omit needless words.”

 

Since we have been at Essex Meadows I have published two more books, Dear Mary in 2019, a collection of letters between my parents during World War II and Essays from Essex in 2023. Over the past ten years I have written 350 ‘Thoughts of the Day,’ 135 essays on books I have enjoyed, 56 ‘Essays from Essex,’ and 68 ‘More Essays from Essex.’ 

 

But my pace is slowing, especially in writing ‘Thoughts of the Day.’ Walking is more often confined to the corridors at Essex Meadows, and I now have the papers delivered. Nevertheless, I take pride in being occupied, while remembering those words attributed to the late journalist Bob Talbert (1936-1999): “Have you noticed that even the busiest people are never too busy to take time to tell you how busy they are.”

 

Now, where are my slippers and the TV remote?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Is There a Way Forward?"

The photo: An approaching storm, as seen from our window at the Oyster Point Hotel in Red Bank a couple of weeks ago. But the sun shone the next day. Some will say I am Panglossian in my optimism, but I do believe the U.S. has the ability to self-correct. In his 2021 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffet wrote: “Despite some severe interruptions, our country’s economic progress has been breathtaking. Our unwavering conclusion: Never bet against America.” To which I add, Amen.

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Is There a Way Forward?”

August 26, 2026

 

“The free access which many young people have to romanticize novels and

plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth.”

                                                                                                                    Reverend Enos Hitchcock (1744-1803)

                                                                                                                     Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, 1790

 

Each generation is concerned for the next. Ours is no different. I worry. But should I? For a country at the peak of its economic and military powers, and still a beacon of freedom for the oppressed and the aspirant around the world, the mood of Americans, at least as expressed by some commentators and some in the media, is bleak. On the other hand, foreign visitors to the World Cup appeared to have seen something in America that we natives have missed: they lauded the size of the country, the spirit of its people and their generosity; they praised its abundance – what is available in the stores and the size of its homes and cars; and they noted the freedom of its people. Who is right?

 

While I remain a long-term optimist, I worry. Is classical liberalism disappearing into socialism on the left and isolationism on the right? Ad hominem attacks have replaced reasoned debate. Self-righteous prigs on the left assume all Republicans to be racists, homophobes, and misogynists, while smug conservatives suppose all Democrats to be Communists and to lack an appreciation of our history.

 

Most immediately, we face a fiscal crisis. Federal debt recently crossed $40 trillion. As a percent of GDP (121.5% at the end of 2025), it is higher than it was at the end of World War II (119.1%). Entitlement spending in 1960 represented about 25% of the federal budget – roughly the same as defense. Today it is close to 60%, while defense spending has declined to 12 percent. Rising deficits have ballooned interests costs from about 9% of the budget in 1960 to 14% today. We are on an unsustainable path, unaddressed by either political party. Despite Treasury Secretary Bessent’s decision to double the size of long-dated bond buybacks, bond vigilantes will step in if politicians continue to avoid the problem.[1]

 

There are other concerns: Will autonomous robots surpass human intelligence and be used for nefarious purposes? Studies from Harvard and Stanford indicate that public school student performance has declined for over a decade. Those studies are supported by declining performance of U.S. students on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests. While major crime figures show a decline, there has been a surge in anti-Semitic incidences. Ethical standards are said to have “evolved,” whatever that means. Church attendance has been declining for decades, and today the average teenager spends five hours a day on social media, versus nine to twelve minutes a day reading books for personal interest.  Much of mainstream media lauds the harvesting of eggs but is silent on the benefits of motherhood. According to a March 2026 Pew Research survey only 47% of American see their fellow Americans as morally good.  

 

While stock markets have surged – 62% of Americans are invested in the stock market either directly or indirectly – I worry that a decade of low interest rates have inflated leveraged personal balance sheets. A growing percentage of individuals are involved in speculative pursuits: Approximately 25% have been involved in legal sports betting, about 20% have purchased cryptocurrencies, and 15% have put money into prediction markets, a market that exploded in 2024. Sounds like gambling to me. Falling tech stock prices and excess leverage abetted the July collapse of Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Fund, as assets fell from $45 billion to $10 billion in a month. Was that a harbinger of things to come?

 

Politics have devolved into the “MAGA” right and the Socialist-progressive left. Politicians are cantankerous. Mr. Trump tells us what a fantastic job he has done, while far-left Democrats promise tuition-free college, making the rich pay their “fair share,” expanding the Supreme Court, and opening our borders.

 

Party interests soar above national unity, even as we celebrate 250 years of democracy and freedom. Why? And is there a way forward? One is reminded of William Butler Yeats’ 1920 poem, “The Second Coming:”

 

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

..................................

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The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

 

But we have been in tough straits before: On December 20, 1860 South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union; they were followed by ten more states. Seventeen years later, and after the deaths of three quarters of a million soldiers, the Union was, finally, fully reunified. The stock market crash of October 1929 led to a depression that lasted for more than ten years, to the start of World War II. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, our financial markets were in turmoil: stocks fell 50%; the yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond rose from 5.6% in 1968 to 15.6% in 1981; inflation peaked at 15% in March 1980. In late August 1990, after Iraq had invaded Kuwait, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher admonished President George H.W. Bush with advice that would be good for our leaders today: “Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly.”

 

From the first immigrants, America was blessed, geographically, and with a diverse population without aristocratic antecedents. Our government was founded by men schooled in the enlightenment by those like John Locke, Montesquieu, John-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. It was a land that allowed for experimentation in government – not one founded on military might, royalty, or the church – but one composed, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, “of, by and for the people.”

 

As for the question that makes up the title of this essay, yes, I am sure there is a way forward. I have faith in the American people. That I cannot chart its course does not mean it is not there. I believe common sense, which has dictated America’s passage through history will prevail. Good men and women will emerge to lead the way. Course corrections will be necessary, but answers will be found. That is not to say there will not be shoals or rough seas; for I am sure there will be. But a way forward will be found. Clouds will dissipate, and the sun will shine. 

 

 

 

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[1] An excellent op-ed on this subject was posted by Stanley Druckenmiller in the August 25, 2026 issue of The Wall Street Journal.