On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, a divided U.S. gathers to remember and grieve

When the 9/11 terrorist attacks began on a blue-sky morning 25 years ago, the Rev. Eric Olsen was working in upstate New York. The National Guard unit where Olsen served as chaplain scrambled to deploy and served for months on a security detail around the massive pile of wreckage at ground zero, site of the World Trade Center's fallen twin towers in New York City.

"There was all this uncertainty," Olsen recalls. "Are there going to be more attacks? Is this just the forerunner?"

A quarter century later, a politically and culturally divided United States is commemorating a day of violence, loss and heroism that altered the trajectory of the nation, sending people's lives spiraling in directions they could never have expected.

"I intend to take some time to myself to pray, contemplate and grieve," says Olsen, who served a harrowing tour in Iraq and spent more than a decade of active Guard service counseling military personnel caught up in ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I did a lot of death notifications for families who lost sons and daughters. It was just a very sad time," he says, now 68 and retired.

The Rev. Eric Olsen, who lives in Saranac Lake, N.Y., served as a chaplain in New York's National Guard, deploying to support a security detail at ground zero in Manhattan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and later serving a tour in Iraq.

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Courtesy Eric Olsen

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The toll from 9/11 and the events that followed has been devastating. On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists affiliated with al-Qaida, an Islamic extremist group, hijacked four commercial airliners. Two planes were flown deliberately into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan. A third jetliner slammed into its target, the Pentagon, in Arlington, Va. A fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa.

Historians say at least 2,977 people died in the initial attack. A study by Brown University found that an additional 7,000 U.S. service members died in post-9/11 wars. Tens of thousands more fell ill, and many died from illnesses linked to toxic debris that spread after the planes crashed.

A call to Americans, especially the young, to remember 

To mark the first quarter-century after 9/11, ceremonies are being held around the United States. In New York City, officials including Vice President Vance and former President Joe Biden will gather at the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan. There will also be vigils at New York City Fire Department stations and a special baseball game between the New York Yankees and the New York Mets that will include tributes to first responders and those who lost their lives.

"I encourage every American, particularly people who are young enough to not remember that day, just to tune in for a couple of hours and see what it meant," Vance said during a press conference last week. "I think that sense of commonality and common purpose that we all had on 9/11, that's something we really try every single day to get back to."

President Trump will commemorate the anniversary at an event held at the Pentagon, where he is expected to give a speech. A memorial service will also be held at the site in rural Pennsylvania where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after passengers disrupted the terrorists' plan to use the plane in an attack on Washington, D.C.

One treatment of the aftermath of the attacks is a new exhibition at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City called "In Their Honor: 25 Years of 9/11-Inspired Service." It recognizes people who committed their lives to public service after experiencing the trauma of that day.

A visitor stands at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, 2025.

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Jeff Swensen

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A couple pauses to read the nameplate on a memorial bench at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Va., on Sept. 10, 2025.

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Jim Watson

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"That we can come together with compassion, with courage to serve after suffering an incredible set of losses, on 9/11 and after, is a really powerful message," says museum director Elizabeth Hillman, a historian and U.S. Air Force veteran.

Questioning 9/11's impact on a divided America

Hillman says that like many, she is taking stock, on this milestone anniversary, of how 9/11 reshaped American society. "It changed the [nation's] foreign policy, the shape of the armed forces and the ways we understood what a threat was and what constitutes being safe," she told NPR.

Questions about the impact and legacy of 9/11 remain fraught for many. On Tuesday, New York City officials unveiled a repository for air quality documents linked to 9/11 that had been withheld from the public by past administrations. During a press conference, Jon Stewart, the comedian who has emerged as an activist supporting 9/11 survivors, voiced anger over a disclosure that he described as long overdue.

"They didn't recognize that the air everybody was breathing in downtown Manhattan was toxic until October of 2001," Stewart said. "So to be fair to them, they only buried that information for 25 years."

Former New York Gov. George Pataki, who was in office when the attacks happened, told NPR that he's proud of how New York City recovered from the disaster. But Pataki voiced concern about fault lines in American society that he believes grew after 9/11.

"We are just in so many ways unable to work politically toward finding common ground," Pataki said. "The biggest disappointment to me since Sept. 11 is that polarization. It's the opposite of the sense of unity — that we were all Americans — that we felt on Sept. 12."

On Sept. 18, 2001, New York Gov. George Pataki (left) stands with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (center) and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani at the World Trade Center attack site in New York.

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Timothy A. Clary

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Olsen, the former National Guard chaplain, says he also feels alarm about the nation's direction in the decades after the attack.

"I don't like the way it's gone. I love this country, but we're more disjointed and un-unified than we've ever been in my lifetime. Everybody's afraid of everything. And now we're back in the Middle East bombing again," Olsen says.

One of the twin reflecting pools at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City on Sept. 2. The two pools sit in the footprints of the original twin towers at the World Trade Center.

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Spencer Platt

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Political and cultural divisions surfaced again ahead of Friday's commemoration, when two prominent Republicans who led New York on 9/11, Pataki and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, suggested in interviews, including with NPR, that the city's current Democratic leader, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, should stay away from memorial ceremonies.

Speaking with NPR, Pataki criticized Mamdani for failing to break all ties with controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who in 2019 said that America "deserved" 9/11. Piker later distanced himself from his remarks and apologized. During a mayoral debate in 2025, Mamdani described Piker's statement as "objectionable and reprehensible." 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and other Democrats condemned efforts to dissuade Mamdani from attending Friday's ceremonies. Mamdani, who has taken part in numerous 9/11-related events honoring families and first responders over the last week, told reporters that he will be present at Friday's ceremony in Lower Manhattan.

"I love this city — I love this country," Mamdani said. "What I want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them."
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