9/11 Unified America. Just 25 Years Later, We’re Tearing It Apart.

I placed my panic-rations on the checkout counter: a carton of milk, three cans of Spaghetti-Os, and a sleeve of Oreos. Jet black U.S. fighter jets shot through the sky as military vehicles prowled empty streets. If this was the apocalypse, I was sure we were going to die.

It was a strikingly beautiful morning, just beginning to feel like fall, as the sun came up on 9/11 in New York City. I’m still shocked at how quickly it all flipped into a nightmare. But 25 years later, I feel nostalgic for a time when devastating tragedy had the galvanizing effect of bringing people together. Still, what was once common sense now feels like wishful thinking. 

Having witnessed all kinds of New Yorkers helping total strangers without batting an eye on 9/12, 9/13, 9/14, and for years into the future, I found the immediate splintering of families and friends during the COVID-19 pandemic in Los Angeles an extraordinarily bitter pill to swallow. Instead of offering a simple gesture of kindness, “stronger together” meant shoving a radicalized fist in a stranger’s face and declaring war. 

Pew polling following 9/11 revealed a nation in mourning, rallying together despite the immeasurable psychological stress of real fear and sadness. We seemed to understand who the heroes, victims, and survivors were, and where the rest of us could pitch in. Fifteen years later, 76% of Americans still considered it the most important event in our country’s history. 

Now, only 30-somethings are old enough to remember any of it. Vibe checks in 2026 show 69% of Americans are dissatisfied “with the way things are going,” while 59% think our “best years are behind us.” We had a good thing going. Is this where it all comes apart? We seem to have lost the plot on the “United” part of our States of America.

A week after 9/11, I attended a candlelight vigil in Union Square. Someone offered me an unlit candle and a light as thousands of tiny flickers illuminated the darkness of unspeakable sorrow. Total strangers felt familiar, holding each other close, singing and silently screaming in prayer. The faces of thousands of “missing” people, memorialized by 8-by-11-inch photocopies posted all over the city, flashed through our minds. Not all would be found.

At the time, I was a 20-something up-and-comer from the ‘burbs, working my first big girl job after college in midtown. It was the era of a Disney-fied Times Square with ice cream artisans singing birthday songs at Cold Stone Creamery — a far cry from the seedy heroin strip club scene of decades past. It was clean — for New York City. Safe, mostly. I had eventually gotten used to eating an egg and cheese bagel on the sweaty subway ride to wherever I wanted to go, at any time of day or night. I had fallen in love with that city and all the people in it.

I was in the shower when I felt my apartment shake at 8:46 a.m. There was new construction across the street, so I assumed it was that. After a second sudden shake at 9:03 a.m. I looked out my bedroom window. The entire construction crew stood still, nail guns in hand, looking over my head into the horizon. 

I flew up the stairs to the roof of my building to find both the North and South Towers engulfed in flames like a portal to hell. A neighbor I didn’t know stood next to me, unable to speak. Time stood still. 

“I wonder how they’ll ever put out the fire if —” The words barely crossed my lips before the South Tower fell into the earth leaving a ghostly plume of thick ash. It felt like just seconds before the North Tower collapsed. The skyline — the one from all the movies — was gone in an instant. I couldn’t even understand the number of innocent people who had just died in front of my eyes. I can’t, even now.  

A few years earlier, I had visited the observation deck on top of the South Tower. The glassed-in space on the 107th floor offered an exciting 360-degree view of the concrete jungle, with an outdoor deck 1,377 feet above street level. Even the express elevator ride to the top was scary and thrilling. It was beautiful. 

It would never open to the public that day, but my stomach twisted into knots imagining a dad with his two daughters squealing with the thrill of imaginary danger, not knowing what evil was coming.

All the trains and buses stopped. The first cell phone I ever owned (a Panasonic-something that didn’t even flip) was useless with downed cell service. My building was situated within the lockdown perimeter where no one was allowed south of 14th Street. Black smoke billowed across the river, but all available air reeked of hot plastic and burning tires. The uninvited smell of death.

The few people I knew in the city were unreachable. A friend worked at the Whitney Museum of Art. My roommate had already made it to the office where we both worked. My mom was getting her masters at NYU, but since I couldn’t text her, I called my dad from the landline in my apartment.

“Dad?” I tried not to freak out and start crying, but that was too difficult.

“Hey, Lauren.” He was calm and serious. Maybe we were both in shock. He was at our house, a few hours away from the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 that had crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. No one knew what could happen next.

I watched people rush across the bridges into Brooklyn. My across-the-hall neighbor — who ran the two miles from his office in the financial district back to our building, losing everything but his socks and clothes along the way — told me people were swimming across the river to escape. It was chaos.

“Should I leave the city?” I asked my dad. I stayed put. What was I really planning to do anyway, walk to Pennsylvania?

Almost everyone has their own story of that day. My LA friends remember waking up to the horror. Others remember the crash at the Pentagon. Still more were stuck somewhere far from home with a grounded flight, as America fell to its knees. Never was there such transcendental mercy in a morning alarm that didn’t go off. 

I was lucky. I didn’t personally know anyone who died that day. But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel the collective loss of a city that had been so savagely gutted. 

I wanted to do something. Everyone wanted to do whatever they could. Further illustrating the triumph of helpful humans, I got turned away from donating blood because “honey, we’re overflowing.” At least that’s what the blood bank lady told me. That was okay, though. 

Thousands of NYFD firefighters worked Ground Zero for the 100 days that the site continued burning after the attacks. During that time, someone buzzed my building hoping to collect extra socks and T-shirts for teams on site. I grabbed a stack of oversized T-shirts and a few pairs of thick socks. Just as I was about to hand them over, I spotted a red San Francisco 49ers T-shirt folded neatly in the pile. It was from my uncle, who had suddenly died at age 40 two years earlier. “I hope these help,” I said. “Everything helps,” the woman assured me. My uncle would have offered to help anyone who needed it. Especially whoever got his T-shirt.    

Maybe one of the best things we can do as we move ever further away from 9/11 is to keep that spirit of unity alive. So what if we weren’t there that day. It’s not too late. All we have to do is stick together like we used to. 

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This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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