(Cache #212)

This blog was originally posted on September 11, 2015. At the bottom of the post, Andris reflects on it, here in September, 2025.

When you went to bed last night, did it even occur to you that today would be September 11th?

Not to me. I am amazed that until almost 9am today, it did not cross my mind for a moment that this is the 14th anniversary of the deeply shocking and frightening experience of 2001. I only realized when typing the date of today’s post into Mailchimp, the service I use for distributing this blog.

It would seem that the searing bewilderment, anger and anguish has faded in the public consciousness as well, if that can be gauged by today’s media coverage. While each of the biggest three New York papers – the Wall Street Journal, the Times and the Daily News – has some 9/11 coverage, none are running it as their top story.

CBC.ca is giving it similarly secondary coverage – except for one major, remarkable story. Remarkable because out of the ashes it has found a positive, uplifting narrative. The story is that of the “9/11 babies,” those children born in the United States on September 11, 2001. There are approximately 13,000 of them. They are now, of course, 14 years old. Some, as the piece points out, are taller than their mothers. Or flashing braces.

But here is the most striking thing about these kids. They do not regard the date of their birth as a negative thing.

This is most unexpected. Fourteen years ago, or 10 or even five years ago, would you have wanted your child’s birthday – or your wedding date – to be on September 11? Some people surely would have considered such a coincidence to be almost a curse.

But the 9/11 babies relate their birthday to goodness. They relate it to the helpful and volunteer spirit that gripped the United States, Canada and much of the world on 9/11 and in the days and months afterward. Today, many of them are taking part in 9/11 Day, “a global campaign that promotes charitable engagement and good deeds to memorialize the goodness that pulled the world together following the September 11 attacks.”

Hillary, for example. “A lot of people, when they hear I was born on 9/11, it brings smiles to their faces because they realize that something very bad happened that day, but it was also a day when some good things happened.”

And then there is Trevor. He was born in Pennsylvania and is in Manhattan today, ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange with a group of other 9/11 babies. He will also be volunteering at a food bank. “When people hear about my birthday, it’s like, ‘Wow!’  They’re amazed. But it’s not really weird. I think it’s a good thing to have a birthday on this day. 9/11 Day is about helping out the community.”

As a name, 9/11 is a deeply powerful one. But Trevor has done something interesting with it. Assuming he was quoted directly, he sees 9/11 not necessarily as 9/11, but as 9/11 Day, a moniker which means fundamentally something else.

As he put it, it means helping out the community. He would be unlikely to disagree that its abiding message is one of love and hope, not of hatred and despair. It could also mean that in another 14 years, or even in another 10 or five, 9/11 as a name will be no more. That 9/11 Day, with its quite different meaning, will be the final, enduring thing to rise from the ashes.

—

This video has been updated since my original post in 2014.

September 1, 2025

Reading this blog today for the first time in several years, I realize that I didn’t think to characterize the name change, from 9/11 to 9/11 Day, as a rebranding. But you could certainly look at it that way. Has the rebranding taken hold as 10 years ago I predicted it would?

Founded by a charitable organization, the day was officially designated in 2009 by President Barack Obama as the September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance – or, 9/11 Day. I just Googled it to learn that over 35 million Americans engage in some kind of charitable service on September 11th, making it the United States’ largest day of charitable action.

This certainly augurs well for 9/11 Day eventually taking over as the predominant way of referring to September 11. That said, something I did not seem to consider 10 years ago was whether I personally would someday start referring to 9/11 as 9/11 Day. Asking myself the question now, I anticipate that the answer is no – because I was alive when the attacks occurred. I saw the horror live on TV and the attacks are very real in my mind – they are not any sort of abstraction, which is what 9/11 Day, as a name, at least partially turns them into.

It could be that 14-year-old Trevor’s spontaneous use of the 9/11 Day name in the story above points at the truth: 9/11 as a name will only die, if ever, when its last witnesses are gone.