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There are certain days in a lifetime that people simply don’t forget.
For generations before ours, it was Pearl Harbor. For others, it was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
For so many of us, it was Sept. 11, 2001.
Ask someone old enough to remember that Tuesday morning where they were when they first heard a plane had struck the World Trade Center, and chances are they can tell you.
They remember where they were, who they were with and what they were doing when it was still an ordinary September morning.
At first, we tried to understand how such a terrible accident could happen.
Then the second plane hit.
And we knew our lives would never be quite the same.
It’s hard to believe that was 25 years ago.
We’ve had reporters come through our newsroom who were in diapers when the attacks happened. Some weren’t even born yet.
For them, Sept. 11 isn’t a memory. It’s history.
That’s strange to think about for those of us who watched it happen.
We remember smoke pouring from the Twin Towers, the Pentagon burning and people running through streets covered in ash. Here in Pennsylvania, we learned that a fourth plane had crashed into a field near Shanksville after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.
Then we watched the towers fall.
Nearly 3,000 people who started that Tuesday morning like any other never came home.
But the next morning came.
What came next? How were we supposed to move forward after something like that?
Families were still waiting for news of loved ones. Fires still burned at Ground Zero. The country was grieving and frightened.
People did what they could.
Some from our community went to New York to help. Firefighters, emergency responders, construction workers, clergy and volunteers searched, moved rubble, fed workers or simply showed up to do whatever was needed.
Everyone had a connection, or knew someone who had a connection to that day.
Back home, people donated blood, hung flags and looked for ways to help. For a while, the divisions that seemed so important on Sept. 10 didn’t seem quite as important anymore.
Life went on, but it wasn’t the same life we’d been living on Sept. 10.
Today, two reflecting pools mark where the Twin Towers once stood, surrounded by the names of those who died. The buildings are gone. Lower Manhattan was rebuilt. What remains are the memorial and the stories of the people who remember what happened there.
Those of us who remember Sept. 11 now have another responsibility: telling its story to generations who don’t.
That means telling them about the people who went to work and never came home, the first responders who ran toward danger and the passengers and crew aboard Flight 93 who fought back.
It also means telling them what happened the next day.
Sept. 12 wasn’t remarkable because everything suddenly got better. It didn’t. People were grieving. Families were still searching for loved ones. There was rubble to clear and work to do.
So they got to work.
Twenty-five years from now, there will be fewer of us who can say, "I remember."
Eventually, no one will be able to.
By then, Sept. 11 will belong entirely to history. What the next generation understands about that day will depend on what we tell them now -- what happened, who we lost, how the world changed and what people did afterward.
We can’t give them our memories.
But we can make sure they understand why we still remember.