9/11, 23 years later: As grief remains, victims’ families fear the date’s importance is fading from public memory

“No day,” as the poet Virgil wrote in words emblazoned on a 9/11 Memorial and Museum wall, shall erase the victims of the attacks “from the memory of time.”

But on the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the families who have gathered in Lower Manhattan for the annual memorial ceremony year after year are grappling not only with the grief of the loved ones they lost, but also the fear that the day’s importance is fading from public memory.

On Wednesday morning at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum, mourning families lifted photographs of their loved ones skyward as bells tolled at the significant moments of the attack’s progression, starting at 8:46 a.m., when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center. The tolls went on to mark the moments when the South Tower and Pentagon were struck, the Twin Towers collapsed and hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania.

All these years later, loved ones gathered for Wednesday’s memorial told amNewYork Metro that they fear future generations will forget the impact that catastrophic attacks had on the country and millions of people.

“It’s not just on 9/11. I live in pain every single day with the void of my brother in my heart,” said Anthoula Katsimatides, who lost her brother John Katsimatides that morning. “There seems to be a new wave of people that weren’t around 20 years ago, and it is frightening. This was the largest terrorist attack on US soil that ever occurred in this nation. It’s not something that happened somewhere else. It happened here and we are at the site where thousands of people lost their lives. If we don’t educate people, we are doomed to have history repeat itself.”

Katsimatides recalls her brother as a bright-eyed, spirited, and funny 31-year-old bonds broker who worked on the 104th floor for Cantor Fitzgerald; he was one of more than 600 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who died in the attack.

The sheer vibrance of his personality provided her with comfort and hope that he would return home on that terrible September 11th morning.  She held out that hope for a month, but he never came home, one day he was just gone.

“I knew he would make his way home –- I had no doubt about it. I remember crying and falling to my knees when the Towers fell because I was crying for my city. I was crying for all of those people who were killed that day still holding out hope that he would return. I think I held out that hope for a month. We never received anything,” a tearful Katsimatides said, going on to advocate for the significance of the yearly commemoration.  

“It is important to hear our loved ones’ names because it makes it real for the global population that is watching this event to remember that these were real people. This is where they lost their lives. This is where they released their souls,” she added.

Magaly Lemagne also stressed the magnitude of the term “never forget.”  She mourns her brother, Port Authority Officer David Lemagne who perished during the 9/11 terror attacks after making the ultimate sacrifice to save others.  

Twenty-seven-year-old David Lemagne was only on the job for nine months when he saw the first plane hit the North Tower from Exchange Place in Jersey City. Also, working as a paramedic with experience from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, he fought against commands to be deployed in Liberty State Park and instead ran head-first into the Twin Towers, where he lost his life.

“He goes, ‘I know what I am doing. I need to go there.’ So, he responded here in a car with somebody else, and we got pictures where…I think we got it two years later.. of him saving someone. But when the second Tower went down, he perished,” Lemagne said.  “When we received that picture. He wasn’t scared. He was doing his job. He was carrying a woman, and they used a door as a makeshift stretcher.”

Lemagne made sure to bring her 13-year-old son with her to the memorial, sharing that he was named after his uncle.

“He did what he loved, and that was saving people,” Lemagne said. “He made a sacrifice that day so I will always be here on September 11th.”

Joining families of 9/11 victims at the ceremony Wednesday were President Joe Biden and the two candidates seeking to succeed him in the November election — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. 

Former Mayors Mike Bloomberg, who now chairs the 9/11 Memorial and Museum board, and Rudy Giuliani, who was hizzoner during the 9/11 attacks, stood alongside Biden, Harris, Trump and other dignitaries at the ceremony’s start.

Mayor Eric Adams, who tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week, laid a memorial wreath outside Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence.