Two Sad Days Indeed

On Long Island, September 11th, 2001 carries a heavier weight. According to a 2022 statistic by NYC Planning, about 300,000 Long Islanders find their work in the city. Nearly 500 died due to the attacks 25 years ago. Of course, the day itself was about six and a half years before I was born, but I will certainly never forget the videos and stories I heard in school of the Man in the Red Bandana, the heroic civilians who derailed DC-bound Flight 93, and many other accounts of patriotism that day. 9/11 education is one of the things I valued most about my public education, but I don’t think I ever learned the true meaning of the phrase “never forget.” What does it mean to remember something I didn’t live through? Whenever another anniversary passes, I’d always feel bad about not having thought about the day itself in the past 364 days. I wanted to mourn with those who mourned all year around, but I couldn’t bring myself to stay sad enough for the rest of the year.

I still grapple with this feeling today. Up until two years ago, when I was a junior in high school, I couldn't shake the feeling that once the 9/11 video stopped playing, the teacher turned the lights back on, and the conversation ended, that I was destined to forget until next September.

Though I wish I could sit here and write a myth about my efforts of keeping all 2,977 victims on my mind every hour of every day, and telling myself before I did anything unpleasant that it was “for them,” but my words would be only that: a myth. 

A few years ago, I heard a song come on the radio a few days before the anniversary that made me reflect on all I had learned in a different light. That was when I started to remember.

I See Fire by Ed Sheeran was written and produced in 2013 for the movie The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and while I haven’t watched the movie itself, its name and the song already paints a vivid picture of what it might be about. If you don't know the song to which I’m referring, I highly recommend you listen to it before I continue.

I think of this song not as a battle cry against the preventable, but as a prayer over the inevitable. He references not only the “misty eye” of the powerful mountain, but a call “out to the father,” who commands that they standby, prepare, and hold fast in a battle they’ve already lost.

Like I said, I am thankful for the fact that 9/11 is still memorialized in our schools, yet this song made me wonder if we were doing so in the best way possible. 

Both in the song and in our own history, why did men continue to fight battles they knew they would lose? If they knew they would “die tonight,” why did they vow to “die together” instead of retreating? These are the questions teachers should ask and students should contemplate.

I believe, on that day, that God’s eyes were probably as misty as the mountain’s as He “saw a city burning out” and innocent people “[felt] heat upon [their] skin.”

Last year, the opportunity to have those conversations were overshadowed by what had happened the day before: the assassination of Charlie Kirk. 

On September 10th, 2025, I felt as if the shock had thrown me into a bottomless chasm. It was as though the assassin had not only taken Charlie’s life, but the life of the entire Conservative cause. What had I done all my work for? Why had I taken so much care to have such honest, well-meaning conversations? What was the point of it all if it was just whisked away with the “blood in the breeze?” I didn’t lose my motivation, but it was put on pause for a while. I remembered what I was doing was for the good, which will never see defeat as long as God’s good army is parading the Earth. 

As time went on and the year progressed, I became a bit better at remembering what drives me when I’m most exhausted and lazy. Eventually, my will to work was thoroughly reignited, just like many other Conservatives’ were as well. The beautiful memorial service and powerful words of Charlie’s widow, Erika, served as a much needed revitalization to all of our souls. 

This year, Hillsdale College, as well as faithful Americans across the country, endured two days of mourning the loss of many American patriots and one American leader. These days are not only used as opportunities to dwell on the past, but to contemplate our future. Although Sheeran’s song comes off more as a prayer over the inevitable, I believe there is one line that connects both lamentation and action. 

“And I hope that you remember me”

On these two solemn days, the expectation to mourn comes with a greater call to trudge towards a greater future.

I am probably not the only one who finds it too difficult to carry the names of the nearly 3000 men that lost their lives on the day of September 11th, 2001, yet it is easier for me to remember the name of the one man who lost his life almost 24 years later. 

I believe in this call to action, we ought to start small, remember who we are, and remember why we dedicate ourselves to this great nation every day. 

At a memorial ceremony I volunteered at this past Friday, the attendants were each given one card with the name of someone who died in the attacks. When I picked my card out of the basket, I decided that the best way to follow the calls of the dead was to see if I could get to know the name on it. 

Mark Whitford, Engine 23, was a husband and a father to two twin boys. After graduating from Seton Hall University, where he wrestled as a recruited Division 1 athlete, he served as Captain of the Army Reserves, eventually finding his home in Engine 23 of the NYFD, where on September 10th, 2001, he found out he was called to serve on the prestigious Rescue 5 team. Mark’s proudest moment, according to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, “was when he helped deliver a baby girl whose mother couldn’t make it to the hospital.”

Of course, we know about Charlie Kirk’s pride and joy of his own family, and his endless dedication to the Lord. 

Mark, although ordered, did not stay in the fire truck on the morning of September 11th, opting instead to rescue people in the towers. “He was a rescuer,” Mark’s wife remarked to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. 

Charlie Kirk, likewise, did not stay within the walls of his podcasting studio. He was a minister to the people before he was a pundit or author. 

Although it is important to know who we lost, it is more important to know that we are not them. Each human being is an irreplaceable individual whose value is known only by God. 

We are not Mark Whitford, and we are not Charlie Kirk. 

The best possible way of remembering these great men who have fallen before us is to steward the causes they died for by living them out ourselves. We will never have the talents that either man did, nor comfort their wives as they could. 

This, now, should be our call to action. Let us use our gifts to advance the values that these men, and all other 2,976 lived and died by. We don’t need to remember every name. I, myself, will remember Mark’s, for one name is enough to continue my work.

Though many act as if an appropriate response to national tragedy is to become what they lost, it is simply the opposite. We must forge our own identities, and live the way Christ calls us to. This resolution is simple: the only way we can live their legacies is by creating our own for the good of the values they championed in life and death.