EP. 146 9/11 Never Forget

You can watch 9/11 footage any day you want, but it still doesn’t recreate what it felt like when the second plane hit and an entire country realized the truth at the same time. We go back to Tuesday morning, September 11th, 2001, tracing the timeline from the first impact at the World Trade Center to the Pentagon attack and the moment the United States grounded civilian aircraft and the skies went eerily quiet.

Along the way, we focus on the human stories that turn history into something real: firefighters, police officers, paramedics, and dispatchers moving toward danger; civilians helping strangers through smoke and stairwells; and the rare perspective of filmmaker Jules Naudet capturing the chaos as it unfolds. We also spend time with Flight 93, where passengers, after learning what was happening through phone calls, chose to fight back and changed the outcome at the cost of their lives.

Then we talk about what happened after the towers fell: the nearly 3,000 victims whose names cannot be reduced to a number, the volunteers and blood drives, the flags on houses and cars, and the brief season when Americans put differences aside to help Americans. That’s where the conversation turns to patriotism, not as perfection or politics, but as care, sacrifice, and responsibility to each other.

If “never forget” still means something, it has to mean remembering people and passing the story on to the generations who weren’t old enough, or weren’t born yet. Subscribe to the show, share this episode with someone younger, and if it moved you, leave a review and tell us what you remember most.#thebenmaynardprogram #tellyourstory #neverforget #nypd #nyfd

Transcript

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Why We Remember And Share

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Hey there. Welcome into the Ben Maynard program. Thanks for being here. Um, today we're gonna do something a little different. We're gonna take a trip back in time, not to a great concert, not to a classic album, not even to some crazy story from the world of rock and roll. As you know, this program is available wherever you get your podcasts, and it's on YouTube. Um so just search the Ben Maynor program and subscribe. But most importantly, share it more than any other episode. Share this one. Share it with your people, share it especially with the generations behind us, the younger generations who most of them weren't old enough, some not even alive on this particular day. We're going back to a Tuesday morning, September 11th, 2001. A day that changed America, a day that changed the world. And honestly, if you were alive that morning, you don't need me to tell you where you were. You remember. You remember the television, you remember the phone calls, you remember the confusion, you remember looking at those buildings and thinking this can't possibly be happening. And then you remember realizing it was happening. So today, I want to walk you through that day from the beginning. I want to talk about the people who were there, the people who saw it, the people who ran toward the danger while everybody else was trying to get away, the passengers on flight 93 who decided they weren't going to let their airplane become another weapon. The firefighters, the police officers, the paramedics, the ordinary Americans who suddenly found themselves in an extraordinary situation. And I want to talk about something else. Something I think we something I think we need to talk about more. Patriotism. Because after September 11th, America changed. We saw flags everywhere. We saw people standing together. We saw strangers helping strangers. We saw Americans disagree about plenty of things. But for a little while, we remembered that we were Americans first. And that's where I want to end this episode with those two words.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Never forget.

The Morning That Looked Normal

SPEAKER_00 3:10

It was a beautiful clear blue New York City sky.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

The kind of morning where you don't have any reason to believe that history is about to change forever. Nineteen terrorists associated with Al-Qaeda had boarded four commercial airplanes departing from the East Coast. American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77, United Airlines Flight 93, four, four airplanes, four crews, hundreds of innocent passengers, and a plan that was designed to turn ordinary commercial airplanes into weapons. Flight 11 took off from Boston at 759 that morning. Flight 175 also took off from Boston at 815. Flight 77 left Washington Dulles at 820, and Flight 93 left Newark at 842. And then at 846 in the morning, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The world didn't know yet that America was under attack. People watching television didn't know. The people in New York didn't know. Most of the country had no idea. There was confusion. Was it an accident? Was it some kind of terrible aviation disaster? Then the images started coming in. Smoke pouring from the North Tower, people standing in the streets looking up, firefighters responding, police responding, people inside the building trying to figure out what had just happened. The 9-11 Memorial historical records tell us that emergency personnel immediately began moving toward the World Trade Center. Firefighters, police officers, paramedics, people who didn't stop to ask, is this safe? They just had a job. There were people in the building and they were going in. One of the most extraordinary things about September eleventh is how many people experienced the same event from completely different places. There were people inside the towers, people in surrounding buildings, people on the streets, people in emergency vehicles, people watching from television studios, and people who happened to be filming. French filmmaker Jules Noddett was in New York in 2001 working on a documentary about firefighters. That morning, he was riding with members of the New York City Fire Department. His camera was rolling when he captured Flight 11 hitting the North Tower. Think about that. He wasn't trying to document history. He wasn't looking for some huge moment. He wasn't, he he was he was just making a documentary about firefighters. And then suddenly his camera captured one of the most consequential moments in American history. He and the firefighters then made their way to the World Trade Center. And his his footage captured the chaos inside the North Tower lobby as firefighters and emergency personnel

When America Realizes It’s Attack

SPEAKER_01 7:20

tried to organize a response. You can hear the urgency in their stories. People didn't know what was happening, but they knew something terrible had happened. And then at 9.03, the second airplane hit. United Airlines Flight 175 slammed into the South Tower. Now, there was no question this wasn't an accident. This was an attack. America was under attack, and it was happening live on television. I think this is one of the moments that is almost impossible to explain to someone who wasn't who wasn't alive then. Today somebody can watch the footage on YouTube, they can watch documentaries, they can see the photographs, they can look at the timeline. But there's a difference between watching history and experiencing history. On September 11th, millions of Americans watched that second airplane hit the South Tower. And the realization hit. This is intentional. Somebody is doing this to us. There are moments when an entire country realizes something at almost the same time. They realize it all at once. And that was one of those moments. Inside the towers, people were trying to get out. Stairwells became escape routes. People helped one another. People gave directions. People carried strangers. People who were terrified themselves tried to calm somebody else down. And outside, firefighters were going in. Police officers were going in. Paramedics were going in. They were climbing those stairs while people were coming down. Just think about that. One group was going down because they were trying to survive. And another group was going up because they were trying to save lives. And those two groups passed each other on the stairs over and over and over again. I don't think we'll ever fully understand. Because these men and women knew something was terribly wrong. They saw the smoke. They heard the reports. They knew the building had been hit by an airplane. An airplane, are you kidding me? And they still went inside. The 9-11 memorial documents that approximately 2,000 police officers and nearly 1,000 firefighters responded to the World Trade Center, along with more than 100 ambulances dispatched just within the first hour alone. Thousands of people responding, and many of them never came home. These weren't movie characters. They were fathers, sons, brothers, daughters, friends, neighbors. People with families waiting for them. People who had gotten up that morning expecting to go to work. And yet when the alarm came, they went.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

That's courage.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

That's real courage. Not the kind, not the kind you see in a movie, not the kind where that you see on a ball field at a sporting event. But the kind where you're scared and you do it anyway.

Pentagon Strike And Skies Go Quiet

SPEAKER_01 12:32

While New York was burning, the attack wasn't over. At 937 that morning, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of War. And again, another airplane, another group of innocent people, another group of first responders running toward danger. And now the entire country knew. This was bigger than New York. This was a coordinated attack on America. Washington was under attack. The government was scrambling. Air traffic across the country was completely being shut down. And for the first time in American history, civilian aircraft were being ordered out of the nation's skies on an unprecedented scale. Imagine being on an airplane that morning. Just imagine being told that the entire country was essentially closing its airspace. You don't know what's happening. You don't know whether your family is safe. You don't know whether your destination is safe. You don't even know what happens next.

Flight 93 Decides To Fight

SPEAKER_00 14:07

And then we get to the story of Flight 93.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

And to me, this is one of the most powerful stories of September 11th. And I'm sorry. I sorry, I have to step away from the mic just for a second. Just give me two seconds. Oh, for those of you watching, I apologize for that. But man, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I didn't think this was gonna happen. United Airlines Flight 93 took off from Newark. It was headed towards San Francisco. But the passengers didn't know what was happening when the hijacking began. And then they started they started making phone calls. And they that that's that's where the story changes. Passengers learned about the World Trade Center, they learned about the other hijacked airplanes, and then they began to understand that this wasn't a normal hijacking. This was something completely different. And the people aboard Flight 93 made a decision. They were going to fight back. We know about people like Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett, and many others. Men and women who understood that they probably weren't going to survive. But they decided that they weren't going to simply sit and wait. They fought. They attempted to regain control of the airplane. And at 10 03 in the morning, Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The airplane never reached its intended target. We don't know with absolute certainty what the hijackers intended to hit, but we know Washington, D.C. was a likely target. And we know something else. The passengers and crew fought back. They changed the outcome. They sacrificed their lives. And in doing so, they saved countless lives.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

That's heroism.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

One of the most heartbreaking parts of September eleventh is the phone calls. People calling their wives, their husbands, their parents, their children, their friends. Some people called to say goodbye. Some called because they needed somebody to know what was happening. And some called because they simply needed to hear a familiar voice. Flight attendant Betty Ong aboard Flight Eleven contacted people on the ground and helped provide critical information about what was happening aboard the aircraft. Flight attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney also communicated important information about the hijacking. Flight seventy-seven flight attendant Renee May contacted her mother and reported that the airplane had been hijacked. These weren't just phone calls. Information coming from people who were trapped inside these airplanes. People who were terrified, but still trying to help. Even in those final moments, there's something that's something that I think is important. They didn't just think about themselves, they were thinking about everybody else.

Towers Fall And Names Matter

SPEAKER_01 19:01

At nine fifty-nine, the South Tower collapsed. And this is another moment where the scale of what was happening became almost almost impossible to comprehend. A building that was standing moments, just moments earlier, was suddenly gone. People ran. Dust and debris filled the streets. People were covered in gray. People couldn't see.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

People couldn't breathe. People didn't know who was live.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

And they didn't know who was missing. They didn't know whether another building was going to come down. And still, people helped one another. You see photographs from that day. People holding hands, people helping injured strangers, people covered in dust, firefighters carrying people, police officers directing people, ordinary civilians helping whoever, whoever they could. This is the part of September eleventh that I never never want us to forget. Because absolutely, yes, absolutely, hundred percent. September eleventh wasn't attacked it was murder. It was tragedy. It was evil. But it also revealed something about the American people. When everything went wrong, the people helped. At ten oh three, Flight Ninety Three went down in Pennsylvania. And at ten twenty-eight, the North Tower collapsed. The two towers that had defined defined the New York skyline were gone. Thousands of people were missing. Nearly three thousand people would ultimately be confirmed dead as a result of these attacks. Twenty nine hundred and seventy seven victims of the terrorist attacks themselves. Nearly three thousand. Names, nearly three thousand families, nearly three thousand stories. And here's the thing. When we say nearly three thousand people, sometimes, sometimes the number becomes too big to understand. So we we think about it differently. It was somebody's father, it was somebody's mother, somebody's brother, somebody's sister, somebody's son, somebody's daughter, somebody's best friend, somebody's husband, somebody's wife, every one of those names, every one of those persons belonged to somebody.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Every one of them mattered. So what happened afterward?

Aftermath And A Country Together

SPEAKER_01 23:22

For the next several days, America felt completely different. The airports were quiet. The skies were quiet. New York was covered in smoke and dust. People lined up to note to donate blood. People brought food. The stories behind that. People volunteered. Fire departments from all over the country sent people and equipment. Suddenly flags appeared everywhere. Our houses, our cars, outside businesses, on telephone poles. People who had never talked about politics with one another were talking about America. People who disagreed about everything seemed to agree about one thing. Just one thing. We had been attacked. And we were going to stand together. I remember the feeling of that period. There was um there was a sense that we were all we were all in this together. There was a sense of community that is it's difficult to describe now. And maybe that's one of the lessons of September 11th. We don't have to agree on everything to love our country, to love this great nation. The greatest country in the world. We don't have to vote the same way. We don't have to share the same opinions. We don't have to listen to the same music. We don't have to live in the same part of the country. We don't have to agree on every issue. But we can still be Americans. And when Americans are hurting, we help Americans.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

And that's what we saw.

What Patriotism Means After 9/11

SPEAKER_00 26:07

We saw patriotism.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

And let's talk about patriotism for a minute. Because I think the word has gotten it's gotten complicated and it and shouldn't be. Patriotism isn't saying America is perfect. America isn't perfect. No country is. Patriotism isn't agreeing with everything the government does. It just isn't. But patriotism is loving your country enough to care about what happens to it. It's respecting the people who have sacrificed for it and who continue to sacrifice. It's understanding that freedom isn't free. And on and on September eleventh, you saw patriotism everywhere. You saw American flags. You heard people singing the national anthem. You saw strangers helping strangers. You saw firefighters walking into buildings while everyone else was running out. You saw passengers on flight ninety three decide that they would rather fight than surrender. That's patriotism. That's courage. And that is sacrifice. So when we say never forget, what exactly, what exactly are we saying? What does that mean? I think we're saying more than just remember the buildings. Remember the airplanes. Remember the smoke. Remember the photographs. Remember the date. We're saying remember the people. Remember the twenty nine hundred and seventy-seven victims. Remember the firefighters. Remember the police officers. Remember the paramedics. Remember the emergency dispatchers. Remember the airline crews. Remember the passengers. Remember the people who ran towards danger. Remember the people who opened their homes to strangers. Remember the people who donated blood. Remember the people who traveled across the country to help with rescue and discovery. Remember the people who spent months searching through the wreckage. And remember the people who came home but weren't the same. Because September eleventh didn't end on September eleventh. For many people, it never ended. There were injuries, there were illnesses, there was trauma. There were families who spent years waiting for answers. And there are first responders and survivors who have carried the consequences of that day for the rest of their lives. The 911 Memorial has continued collecting oral histories from survivors, family members, first responders, because those individual stories, they matter. And that's important because history isn't just dates. History is people. Maybe you're listening to this and you were there. And maybe you were in New York. Maybe you were in Washington. Maybe you were in Pennsylvania. Maybe you were in an airplane. Maybe you were a first responder. Maybe you lost somebody. Maybe you watched it all happen on television. Maybe you were a kid sitting in a classroom wondering why all the adults were suddenly so scared. Maybe you were in the military and your life changed that day. Maybe you were working in an office somewhere across America and suddenly everybody stopped working. Maybe you remember the silence.

Never Forget Means People

SPEAKER_01 31:52

The silence. After the airplanes were grounded, the skies were strangely quiet. And silence, that silence, was powerful because Americans had spent their entire lives hearing airplanes overhead. And suddenly nothing. There are teenagers today who weren't even born yet. To them, September eleventh, it's history. It's a day on the calendar. But for us, it's a memory. And eventually those memories will belong to fewer and fewer people. And that's why we have to tell the stories. Not to scare people, not to create hatred, not to keep people angry forever, not to not to create division. We tell the story because forgetting history makes it easier to repeat. And because the people who died deserve more than a number. They deserve to be remembered. One of the things I keep coming back to when I think about September eleventh isn't it isn't, it isn't just the destruction. It's what happened immediately afterward. People stood together. Americans helped Americans. People put their differences aside. And for a brief period of time, there was an understanding that we were. We were part of something bigger than ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

That's the American spirit.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

It's the firefighter climbing the stairs. It's the passenger making the phone call. It's the stranger helping somebody through the dust. It's the person putting a flag outside their house. It's the person driving across the country because they heard that somebody needed help. It's the person who says, how can I help?

SPEAKER_00 35:15

That's America. And that's worth remembering, too.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

So here we here we are. We're talking about September 11th.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Twenty-five years later. And the words they still matter to this day.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Never forget. Never forget the victims. Never forget the heroes. Never forget the firefighters. Never forget the police. Never forget the military. Never forget the airline crews. Never forget the passengers. Never forget Flight 93. Never forget the people who ran toward the danger. Never forget the families who waited. Never forget the people who never got to come home. Never forget the Americans who stood together. And never forget what we learned about ourselves. Because when the worst happened, there were people who ran toward it. There were people who sacrificed themselves for strangers.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

There were people who showed incredible, incredible courage.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

There were people who showed incredible compassion. And there were millions of Americans who simply looked at their neighbors and said, We're going to get through this. And we did. We got through it. We rebuilt, we remembered, and we kept going.

A Final Pause At The Flag

SPEAKER_01 37:38

So as we close up, as we close up shop here, I want to leave you with something simple.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Tonight, tomorrow, the day after.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

When you see an American flag, just take one second, one, just, just one, one, one second.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

And think about what it represents. Think about the people who died on September eleventh, 2001. Think about the people who ran into those buildings. Think about Flight 93.

SPEAKER_01 38:27

Think about the people who answered the phones. Think about the people who searched through the rubble.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Think about the families.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

And think about the country that came together afterward. Because the story of September eleventh isn't a story about how America was attacked.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

It's not only about how America was attacked.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

But it's also a story of how Americans responded. And that's the part I hope we never lose. We can disagree, we can argue, we can have different opinions. That's a part of being American. And but you know, in the end, what really matters is that we stand together. We help each other. We protect each other. And we remember those who came before us.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

So to the men and women who didn't make it home. To the firefighters. We remember you.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

To the police officers. We remember you. To the paramedics, we remember you. To the flight crews and passengers, we remember you.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

To the families. We remember you. We remember your loved ones.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

And to every American who lived through that day, we remember September eleventh, two thousand and one. Twenty-five years later.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

Never forget.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

God bless you, and God bless America. This is the Ben Maynard program. Tell a friend.