09/11/2026
From our resident playwright —
We Landed in a Different America: Remembering September 11, 25 Years Later
by Mike Broemmel
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was on an airplane flying from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Washington, D.C. I never reached Washington.
As the enormity of what was happening unfolded, American airspace was shut down and our plane was diverted to Louisville, Kentucky. I found myself suspended between the place I had left and a capital city under attack … one passenger on one of thousands of journeys abruptly interrupted that morning.
The uncertainty of those hours remains part of my memory of September 11. Something fundamental had changed while we were in the air.
We landed in a different America than the one from which we had departed.
The Human Beings Behind the Numbers
Twenty-five years have passed since hijacked airplanes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and since the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 fought back over a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Nearly 3,000 innocent people were murdered. Thousands more were injured. Countless families were shattered in the span of 102 terrible minutes.
Those of us who lived through September 11 remember where we were when we understood what was happening. We remember the confusion of the first reports and the horror of watching the second aircraft strike the South Tower, extinguishing any hope that the first crash had been a tragic accident.
We remember the towers falling.
We remember people running through streets transformed into canyons of ash. We remember firefighters, police officers, paramedics, and ordinary citizens moving toward unimaginable danger while others struggled to escape.
We remember photographs taped to walls and fences by people desperately searching for loved ones who would never come home.
But 25 years later, we must remember more than the images. We must remember the human beings.
The people killed that day were not symbols. They were individuals in the middle of ordinary lives—answering phones, preparing for meetings, traveling for work, saying goodbye to loved ones, and making plans for that evening. Like me, some boarded airplanes expecting to arrive somewhere else.
Their unfinished stories remind us that history is not merely a collection of dates and statistics. History is made of people whose hopes, relationships, and futures matter.
We must also remember those who survived but were never able to leave that day entirely behind. First responders, recovery workers, volunteers, office workers, and residents exposed to the toxic ruins of the World Trade Center have endured cancers, respiratory illnesses, trauma, and other serious conditions.
For them, September 11 remains present in hospital rooms, medical bills, empty chairs, and families forced to grieve losses that came years after the towers fell. Remembrance must include a continuing commitment to care for them.
What Followed Must Also Be Remembered
The anniversary requires honesty about what followed. For a brief time, Americans reached toward one another with a degree of compassion and shared purpose that now seems almost unimaginable.
Yet fear also produced suspicion, prejudice, and cruelty. Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, Sikhs, immigrants, and others were harassed, assaulted, and treated as though they bore responsibility for crimes committed by terrorists.
Wars launched in the aftermath cost many more lives, American and foreign. Military families carried burdens most Americans never fully understood. Decisions made in the name of national security raised lasting questions about torture, surveillance, civil liberties, and the use of American power.
Acknowledging these truths does not diminish the victims of September 11. It honors them by refusing to turn their deaths into a convenient myth or political weapon.
The dead deserve better than slogans. They deserve a nation strong enough to pursue justice without surrendering wisdom, protect security without abandoning liberty, and practice patriotism without manufacturing fear.
An entire generation has now reached adulthood with no personal memory of September 11. We owe its members the complete story—not only the terror, but also the courage of firefighters climbing stairwells while thousands descended, passengers confronting hijackers, coworkers refusing to abandon one another, and strangers carrying the injured to safety.
Courage wore many faces that day. So did compassion.
For a brief time, Americans recognized that despite all our differences, we belonged to one another. As division is again cultivated for political profit and fellow citizens are portrayed as enemies, that lesson carries renewed urgency.
Let Remembrance Become Action
I began that morning expecting an ordinary flight from Iowa to Washington.
Instead, I landed in Louisville carrying the questions shared by millions of Americans:
What had happened? Who had been lost What would come next?
Twenty-five years later, some answers are clear. Others remain our responsibility to pursue.
So let the bells ring. Let the names be read. Let the moments of silence be observed.
And then let remembrance become action.
Let us care for the survivors. Support the grieving families. Reject bigotry. Defend liberty. Demand wisdom from those entrusted with power.
We honor those who were taken not by preserving anger, but by preserving our humanity. We honor them by refusing to let hatred, division, or indifference determine what comes next.
The past cannot be changed. But the meaning we give it—and the future we build from it—are still ours to choose.
