Twenty-Five Years Later
It’s been twenty-five years since 9/11. I have a few thoughts I wanted to share.
I was thirty years old and teaching high school. Class started at 8:10 AM and the day started normally. When word first started spreading, the staff realized the severity of the situation. It was a world event happening in real time. Some of the teachers gathered classes and we got the televisions out. Classes had cable at the time, so we turned on the news; most available channels seemed to be showing the CNN feed. We began watching and provided context to the students, aged sixteen to eighteen, as best as possible.
In the previous year, I’d participated in a student field trip to NYC. As a part of that trip, we’d gone to the top of the World Trade Center. Now, some of those same students were in the class with me watching the events unfold, and at 9:59 AM we watched together as the first tower came down. Words can’t describe the horror we felt.
I’ll never forget that day, and neither will the students who were with me, watching a new era in history unfold before our eyes.
I prefer to think about the heroism on that day. The firefighters and first responders lost climbing the stairs as the tower fell. The people in the buildings, the airplanes, United Airlines Flight 93, and those in the Pentagon who lost their lives. The people who helped at Ground Zero. The NYC residents who helped each other get off the island. The many responders who arrived on scene and worked for weeks or months, including dogs, who later got sick because of the toxic dust. Each loss devastated entire webs of families and friends. Nearly 3,000 people died that day, but many have also passed since, and each had an extensive family network shattered by the passing.
The entire world entered a new era that day. We must never forget what happened. Today, my thoughts are with the innocent who died, the heroes who died while attempting to save lives, and the families and friends of those who died in the towers or planes or the Pentagon, and those who later died breathing in toxic fumes and dust.
Never forget.
— Timothy S. Johnston, 11 September 2026