For some, 9/11/2001 is distant history. But for many families that lost a loved one, 9/11 is — even now, 25 years later — as present and immediate as yesterday.
Early that morning, I walked to my polling place to vote in New York City’s mayoral primary. Shortly afterward, we heard the news: a small plane had struck the World Trade Center. When we saw the size of the gash on television, my heart sank: I knew it couldn’t have been a small plane. And then the second plane hit.
Three Bloomberg LP employees — Peter Alderman, Bill Kelly and Paul Ortiz — were at a customer conference at Windows on the World in the North Tower. They never made it home to their families. Neither did nearly 3,000 others.
The scale of the loss and depth of the grief our city suffered remains hard to put into words, but it is seared into our hearts. And it is not just the sadness we remember.