9/11 is becoming history. My generation must make sure America never forgets

I was 9 years old, in my second week of middle school, 25 miles from lower Manhattan when the world changed.

I remember being gathered on the carpeted floor of our homeroom when the principal’s aide delivered a note to our teacher. She read it to us with a perplexed look on her face, unaware that the plane she described as having been involved in a tragic accident had passed just a few miles from our school along the Hudson River only minutes earlier.

We’d soon learn this was no accident.