09/11/2026
At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, the world changed.
American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower.
Twenty-five years later, we still remember where we were. We remember the images. We remember the silence that followed the disbelief.
But we should also remember what America looked like afterward.
Firefighters climbed stairwells while others were running down them. Police officers moved toward danger. Strangers reached for strangers. Men and women answered a call to serve without first asking who someone was, where they came from, or what they believed.
For a time, this country remembered something powerful.
We belonged to one another.
On this Patriot Day, the Brothers of Stone Square Lodge No. 22 remember the 2,977 lives taken on September 11, 2001, the families who carried that loss forward, and those whose service in the years that followed came at tremendous cost.
Remembrance asks something of the living.
It asks us to serve when service is needed. To reach across what divides us. To look after our neighbors. To choose courage when fear would be easier.
We cannot change what happened that morning.
We can decide what we carry forward from it.
Let it be courage. Let it be service. Let it be the conviction that when the hardest hour comes, we stand together.
Twenty-five years later, we remember. We honor. We stand united.
Never Forget.
