On this final 4th day of our series, “A VG Writer’s Roundtable 25 years after 9/11: 4 Questions, 4 Days”, we once again turn to the women who lived through September 11th, writers from this blog, who answer below Question #4. As mothers, daughters, sisters, writers, and citizens, we believe we hold a particular responsibility: to keep the memory of that day clear, honest and unsoftened for the generations coming after it. The truth of that day – it’s profound evil, its unrelenting cost, and the unwavering resolve it still demands today – must not be diluted by time or rewritten to pacify the overly triggered “Blame America First” crowd.

For the whole series, you can find Day 1, Question 1, here, Day 2, Question 2, here, and Day 3, Question 3, here.

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Question 4, Day 4

The Introduction.

Memory, in itself, is not automatic. It’s transmitted, or it dies. For those of us who lived through that day – as women who watched husbands, brothers, and sons race toward danger, who shielded children from images no child should see, who felt the country itself take horrific blow after horrific blow – the duty to truly remember 9/11 is personal. We cannot outsource “remembrance” to woke educational institutions that have grown “uncomfortable” with American exceptionalism or with the unapologetic naming of the evils of radical Islamist ideology. We keep the memory of that day clear by telling the truth without the soft shield of euphemism, by refusing to let the fallen simply become props in someone else’s pathetic lukewarm narrative, and by raising kids and grandkids to understand that freedom is NOT the default condition of the world. It’s rare. An exception – NOT the rule. And when threatened, freedom is to be defended fiercely – or it is lost.

Below, the VG writers speak as women who refuse to let the true record on 9/11 be rewritten. – Kate

The Question.

As women—mothers, daughters, sisters, citizens—how do we keep the memory of 9/11 clear and honest for those who will never have lived it?

Our Responses.

Carol – We tell the truth, even when the truth is difficult to look at.

My children were very young on September 11. They know what happened, but they don’t remember that day the way I do. My grandchildren will know it only as history. I was here. I watched it happen, and I believe those of us who were witnesses have a responsibility to tell them what we saw.

That means showing the hard images. It means telling the stories of the people who died, the firefighters who climbed the towers, the strangers who helped one another and the passengers of Flight 93 who fought back.

Nearly 3,000 people were murdered that day, but “nearly 3,000” can become just another number in a history book. Every one of them had a name and a story.

Women have always been storytellers, volunteers and keepers of family memories. We can do the same here. Tell their stories. Say their names. Make sure our children and grandchildren know what happened and who did it.

We remember it. Now we have to make sure they do, too.

Darleen – I’m reminded of Ronald Reagan’s quote: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.” In the days and months right after 9/11, most of the country came together to discover how much more we were alike than different. We shared our experiences with each other, gathered to mourn together or volunteer blood or time. But as we grow older, the younger generation with no memories can be/will be influenced by people with other agendas. We need to pass down our experiences in more permanent ways. Written letters, videos and, yes, ritual. The words of the Passover seder are virtually unchanged over the centuries. Maybe we should have a similar ritual in which to memorialize the events of 9/11. A ritual that can be repeated over a family dinner when elders ask the question and the young ones respond.

I fear that the strong forces that would have us forget have been unopposed in their quest to rub this day right out of existence for Gen Z and beyond. It is up to the Witness Generation to make sure it does not happen.

Deanna – A mother of children born after 9/11, it is my responsibility to show them and tell them what happened that day, the same way that I make sure they know about any other historical event, in age-appropriate fashion.  The burden is on me, as an eyewitness, to convey the raw emotion of what we saw that day, and to also make it clear who the bad guys were.  Innocent people died that day because evil men decided to attack American institutions and values.  It ended when innocent people refused to be victims and fought back.

Jodi – To be completely frank, I’m worried about our fellow citizens, particularly women. Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, the overwhelming patriotism and unity that I witnessed has slowly eroded, leaving in its rearview mirror millions of women either tacitly embracing, or full-throatedly promoting, the same evil that attacked us.

And I ask myself why. And I have no definitive answer.

As a woman, when I think of 9/11, two main things are forever embedded in my mind:

People falling through the smoke-filled air from soaring skyscrapers, making the choice to either meet their deaths by fire…or by jumping, knowing it would be unsurvivable.

And the other is of bravery: A small group of courageous passengers knew their plane was headed for the same destiny. In that moment, they chose courage. Courage to face evil. And courage to literally take down that evil in an open field in Pennsylvania, saving countless other lives while sacrificing their own. They were truly the first responders.

So my message to those who didn’t live through 9/11 is this: sometimes we may face something so overwhelmingly frightening that we have a choice: Give in. Or fight back.

My hope is that we’ll choose to be Todd Beamer.

Lisa – We did not deserve this, as Hasan Piker said (see question 3). This was not an instance of, as Ilhan Omar (also see question 3) puts it, “some people did something”. As the wife of a pilot (who does have to fly this week on 9/11).

As mothers, daughters, sisters and citizens, it is our job to be truthful about what happened on that day. It is our job to be reverent. It is our job to tell the story. To say their names. To thank our First Responders, Our Flight Crews. To hold one another close. To have the resolve to never forget.

Nina – For my part, I need to be clearer with our children and grandchildren as to what took place that day and what it meant for me and our family. Tell them about the eeriness of the empty skies. Tell them what it was like to find out that one of my college roommates barely survived that day because she was there. SHOW them the photos and videos.

Our schools, the media, and the left are NOT telling the story of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States. We must tell the story before they rewrite it any further.

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In Closing.

So here we are.

A quarter of a century after the smoke cleared over Lower Manhattan, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville,  we believe the solemn promise to “Never Forget” faces its greatest test yet. In the past 4 days, we have asked what the next generation must understand. We have asked which lesson feels most urgent in 2026. We have traced the places where American resolve has held, and where it has been allowed to dilute and breakdown. And today, we’ve asked women who lived through that day — and the weeks, months, years following, how we keep the record honest and true for those who come after. It’s not going to be easy.

What emerged from these four days of our Writer’s Roundtable is not simply nostalgia. It’s a reckoning. The towers fell, but the country did not. Ordinary citizens became extraordinary in an instant – running toward danger, giving their last full measure, a country refusing to let fecking terrorists dictate the terms of our existence. That same stubborn resilience from back then, is still available to us today, provided we refuse the softer sanitized stories – pushed by shameful appeasers – that would trade an absolute moral clarity, for short-lived acceptance and comfort – with the “pretend cools”.

Finally…Our “9/11 Memory” is not a museum exhibit (though I’m a huge museum fan). Rather, it’s a living obligation. If we keep it clear-eyed truthful and unapologetic, if we continue to name evil without hesitation and freedom without embarrassment, then what happened on September 11, 2001 – the whole story – will not have been reduced to simply one more date on on someone’s cat calendar.

Thanks for being here with us.

Featured Photo Credit: photo used is original artwork by Victory Girls writer and graphics artist, Darleen Click.