Many of the articles about the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, will likely begin with the writer sharing where they were that fateful Tuesday morning. I can’t start this piece that way, however, because I don’t remember anything from that day. Because I was 4.
While there was a time when the only segment of the population that would have had little to no memory of the attacks was young children, I was born the same year as former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., the youngest member of Congress.
More people who don’t remember 9/11, or were born after it, will continue to enter government service. Nevertheless, three individuals who were young during the attacks — including a federal employee, a veteran and one who worked in national security – said that 9/11 and its aftermath continue to impact the next generation of public servants.
“I feel guilty I don’t remember”
While I don’t remember anything from Sept. 11, 2001, I do have memories from the following days — specifically a tribute to the victims on local news and my parents talking about the attacks with their friends at church. Given how unreliable childhood memories can be, however, I’m not confident in my recollections.
Likewise, Megan Anderson — who previously worked for the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a membership organization for individuals who work in those fields — who was 5 on 9/11 is “pretty confident” she remembers her grandmother picking her up at school.
“I love my grandmother, so I was very excited to see her,” she recalled.
Anderson said that she didn’t see her dad, who worked for the FBI and responded to the Pentagon, for about two weeks after the attack. She said that visits to the building with her dad over the years helped her to make sense of 9/11.
“The big thing that I remember about seeing the Pentagon is my dad walking me through what happened from his perspective,” she said.
Taylor Wensel, the president of a Veterans Affairs Department union local in Utah and a coordinator for the American Federation of Government Employees committee for young members, was also 5 on 9/11 but has no memory of the attacks.
“I even asked my mom a couple times because people bring up what they remember,” Wensel said. “My mom was like, ‘Maybe you were playing with your Barbies.’ I was a Barbie kid, so I was probably playing with Barbies in the basement.”
Every year on 9/11, Wensel watches documentaries about the attacks.
“I feel guilty I don’t remember. I don’t have my own memories, so I have what’s called collective memory, so I’m learning off of other people,” she said. “It was a big thing that happened in my timeline. I looked at my kid, and I said, ‘Hey, you’re learning this, but I lived during it, but I don’t remember it.’”
“There are people who are innately called to serve…and there are events that make that happen a lot quicker”
When I first pitched this article to my editor, who covered 9/11 as a reporter for Government Executive, she said that the attack initially motivated many people to serve in the federal government. It also led to an uptick in military enlistments.
Frank Lopez — an Air Force veteran who is currently attending Harvard Kennedy School through a fellowship for public servants – remembers being one of the last kids in his second grade class to be picked up on 9/11.
“I think by mistake, looking back now, [my teachers] turned on the television, and I actually saw the planes hit the towers,” he said. “I couldn’t really at the time understand what was happening, but I had that feeling that something terrible had gone on.”
As an immigrant from Cuba, Lopez said that he always had a desire to give back to the U.S. but that 9/11 likely “made that happen a lot sooner.”
“I believe that there are people who are innately called to serve. I think that there are events that make that happen a lot quicker,” he said. “9/11 was a culminating event, and it did spur that spirit inside of me.”
Similarly, Anderson said that 9/11 influenced her interest in counterintelligence and counterterrorism work. She also said that the attacks motivated her younger brother, who was 3 in 2001, to join the Marines.
Even Wensel, who has no memory of 9/11, said that it probably impacted her desire to enlist in the military, which was her plan before she became pregnant.
“I think it pushed me to want to protect and to not see that happen — I know it probably won’t happen here in Utah — but I don’t want to see [9/11] happen again anywhere,” she said.
Still, Wensel sees a connection between her interest in the military and her current role at the VA.
“I do help veterans now, so I get the flip side that they protected me and now I help them in return, which is a nice turnover to me wanting to be a Marine,” she said.
“9/11 was just like a constant”
Even though the people I interviewed have limited recollections of the day itself, they said events that occurred as a result of 9/11 stand out in their memories.
“We launched the war in Iraq, and I remember the local casualties up on the nightly news,” Lopez said. “That stayed with me as a kid. I’d always wonder ‘Why are these people in the situation and why are they here on this television screen and like what’s happening?’”
Wensel recalled that her neighbor’s dad was deployed.
“They would send him books and tape recorders, so he could read the books, and then the kids could listen to him,” she said. “That’s how I correlated it. We were attacked, and now my neighbor doesn’t get to see her dad.”
Anderson said that she woke her dad up in the middle of the night to tell him that Osama bin Laden was killed.
“That was actually something we talked about at school. It was a manhunt like ‘We don’t know where he is’ and ‘Oh maybe we found his compound,” she recalled. “That was a really big topic because a lot of people in the area worked for the government, so 9/11 was just like a constant.”
I also remember when bin Laden was killed in 2011, but it’s because President Barack Obama’s announcement interrupted a new episode of “The Celebrity Apprentice,” so I missed which contestant was fired by host Donald Trump.
Lopez, who was deployed to Kuwait and Syria from 2019 through 2020, also brought up his memories of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, specifically the suicide bombing at a Kabul airport that killed more than 180 people, including 13 U.S. service members.
“I remember vividly sitting around the screen with my guys and gals, and we were talking through how centralizing forces within one airport and over the mission planning that would go behind an operation like that in order to get these folks out of there. We war-gamed it basically, and we all determined that what would happen is X potentially, like there’s a high probability it would happen,” he said. “Sure enough, a day or two after, that same thing happened. I thought that was a complete — complete — operational failure, at least the aspect of those folks getting killed, I think it could have been avoided.”
Generational differences
Given that the people I interviewed were all young when 9/11 happened, I asked them if there are other national tragedies that stood out more clearly in their memories. Some of the events that they mentioned included Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wensel also brought up a bomb threat at her school that was connected with a belief that the world was going to end on Dec. 21, 2012, based on the ancient Mayan calendar.
“I remember the lockdown and the cop standing by the door all puffed up. He was a pretty big guy, but short, so it was pretty funny seeing him stock up,” she said. “I remember my parents texting us asking, ‘How’s the day going? If anything weird’s going on, you guys can leave whenever you want,’ which my parents never said that any other day.”
While many of the individuals entering public service today were born pre-9/11, they may only remember a post-9/11 world. As such, a large-scale terrorist attack occurring on U.S. soil, or a school being put into lockdown over a conspiracy theory, is not a wholly unexpected event for them.
“Younger generations get digged at because we’ve generally had pretty decent lives, but we’ve had all these big life events that have caused little things to change,” Wensel said. “My parents will be like ‘Oh, you guys had it easy.’ I beg to differ. I’d rather go through another 2008 recession if it can prevent more school shootings.”
