A few hours after watching the second plane hit the towers on Sept. 11, 2001, I stumbled into my college English class, where my professor asked us to jot down our thoughts and feelings. On a scrap of paper, I described my fear that my brother or father, a Marine, would be in harm’s way in the forthcoming war. My brother Travis Manion, then a midshipman at the Naval Academy, made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq six years later.
It’s now been 25 years since Sept. 11 changed the trajectory of not only my family’s life, but thousands of others. Countless Americans born since then, over 100 million citizens, learn about the attack only from textbooks, documentaries, or presentations. As we tell the next generation what happened on 9/11, keep in mind that remembrance, properly understood, isn’t passive; it’s an act of service.
