The Legacy of 9/11

9/11 marks 6th year and leaves Americans forever changed
by Melanie Lefkowitz

Left, in 2001, Scott Castillo was working in building security on Broadway, not far from the World Trade Center. On Sept. 11 he was in the Brussels Airport, traveling to a cousin's wedding. But for him, the attack hit home, and Castillo was moved to join the Army. Now 34, he works for the Nassau County Department of Social Services, and he champions the needs of other veterans.

You didn't have to be there.

Whether you were in the towers, across the street or across an ocean, the images of that day are indelible: the collapsing buildings, the falling bodies, the teeming, smoke-choked streets.

Those images mark the morning it was obvious that nothing would ever be the same. Not in New York City, not on Long Island, not in the United States, where 2,973 died, not anywhere.

The 16-acre site in lower Manhattan remains unfinished — and the black-shrouded Deutsche Bank building, itself a reminder, claimed two more lives last month…

In the six years since the attacks, as the acrid smell of burning metal faded, the gap in the skyline receded to the background. The headlines moved on to other topics — the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq.

The brute force of 9/11 knocked many people right out of their everyday lives, and some never returned to "normal." It taught them that life is short, that something awful can fall out of even the clearest, bluest skies, that there was no point in jobs that weren't fulfilling and commutes that stole time from their families. It stripped away their faith, or gave them new faith and a new religion. It opened their eyes to suffering and inequality, to the ways, large and small, they could change the world.

These seven people were all, in various ways, moved by the World Trade Center attacks to change their lives. They may not think about Sept. 11 every day, but its impact — and its lessons — are always with them.

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