Letters of Love: Heartfelt Messages from Children to Their Lost Ones After 9/11

Today will be a particularly busy day for 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris. A few hours after she finished her first decisive debate with Donald Trump at the ABC studios in Philadelphia (around 5 a.m. Greek time) she had planned to go with President Joe Biden to the three sites of the terrorist attacks, to to pay tribute to the victims of al-Qaeda.

The White House duo will start at Ground Zero in New York, the site where the Twin Towers once stood (two passenger planes hijacked by terrorists fell on top of them), to the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and to end up at the terrorists’ last target, the US Pentagon itself, in Arlington, Virginia. The Trump side had not clarified its intentions until yesterday, but it is believed that the former president will also go to Ground Zero, separately from his opponents.

The 23 years since the attack that marked American and world history are neither short nor long. The trauma, however, for young Americans who did not get to meet their relatives because of Osama bin Laden and his company, is summed up in the following sentence: “I never got to meet you”.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed when hijackers crashed the four planes into New York’s World Trade Center (Twin Towers), the Pentagon and a field in Southwestern Pennsylvania that tragic September 2001. Among them were fathers with women who had children in belly or people who had (or later “got”) nieces and nephews they never met. This year, as last year, dozens of these “lost children” will read the names of their loved ones, whom they knew only through photographs, stories and the annual memorial services. Last year, 28 of them took the floor, out of a total of 140 relatives who delivered mini-funerals or simply said a name.

Being part of one of the “9/11 families” is a heavy, yet special legacy. After a few decades there will be no people in America who knew the 3,000 dead and at some point they will be remembered like the heroes of Normandy.

“It’s like you’re passing the torch to us,” said 13-year-old Alan Alditsky. His room is filled with photos and memorabilia of his grandfather, Alan Tarasiewicz, one of the firefighters who died in the Twin Towers. He read his name last year and the year before, along with other victims’ names, and will do the same today.

The events, however, are not limited to New York. At the Pentagon, the names of the 184 service members killed on September 11, 2001 will be read, while at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, family and friends will read the names of the 40 passengers and crew members. The official tally at all three locations is 2,977 dead, to which are traditionally added the 6 dead from the “precursor” bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Basically the reading is done by relatives/volunteers, who due to the large supply are chosen with lot. Besides their man, they also mention other names.

THE “CHILDREN OF 9/11” ARE CALCULATED IN 100

Based on US media estimates, approximately 100 children were born after the death of their father on 9/11/2001. Today they are young adults around 23 years old, trying to manage their grief.

“Although we have never met, it is an honor to carry your name and legacy. Thank you for bringing me into this life and into this family,” Manuel Da Motta Jr. said last year of his father, a carpenter and project manager who was killed in the Twin Towers.

At the same time, 18-year-old Callaway Tremble underlined the importance for him and his generation not to forget that the tragedy of 9/11 was an “attack on our country”. In the Twin Towers he lost his aunt, Gabriela Silvina Wiseman, a manager in a software company.

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#met #heartbreaking #message #children #met #relatives

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