KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, NM. -- On September 11, 2001, my younger sister, Heather, and I were inside the Pentagon Child Development Center (CDC). I was almost three years old, and she was just four months old at the time. Thanks to selfless servicemembers and others working on site that day, we, along with the other children in the daycare, were safely evacuated. My dad asked our day care workers a few days after 9/11 how they managed to get so many kids to safety, and they responded that nearly as soon as Flight 77 hit the building, servicemembers showed up at the CDC doors asking, “How can we help?” For infants like my sister, they loaded a few of them into cribs and carried them about half a mile to a spot that was set up near Boundary Channel. For toddlers like me, they held our hands or carried us to the same spot. The cribs were set up in a circle, and the day care workers sat inside that perimeter with us toddlers, comforting us until our parents could arrive. The theme of the memories I have from that day is overwhelming confusion, even more than fear, and sensory overload—overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells of the scene, struggling to process everything that was happening around me.
My mom was working as the 11th Mission Support Squadron Commander at Bolling Air Force Base at the time. During her morning staff meeting, and after knowing what had happened in New York that morning, a member walked in and told her, “Ma’am, the Pentagon’s been hit.” She looked out the window to see a plume of smoke above the Pentagon, knowing both of her baby girls were inside. She was able to connect with my dad for only a few seconds over a phone call, saying, “Get the kids,” and then had to focus on her team, which was tasked with many emergency-response responsibilities, including casualty reporting, personnel accountability, and family assistance for Air Force personnel throughout the DMV area. My dad had recently retired from the USMC and was working in Alexandria, VA, so he was able to find my sister and me and evacuate us from the city, but communication systems were so overwhelmed that it wasn’t until nine hours later that my mom learned we were safe.
My parents have always conveyed to my sister and me how fortunate our family was that day, and in the years since, and how many families were not blessed with the same outcome as ours. They’ve set an example by living their lives in a way that honors those we’ve lost and the families so deeply impacted by the sacrifice of their loved ones, and in doing so, they have inspired my sister and me to want to do the same.
What happened at the Pentagon daycare that day is one of countless stories that make up our nation’s story, one of unsung heroes and ordinary people who stepped up in ways they never could have imagined when they woke up that morning. On a day that revealed the worst in humanity, our very best shone through in how we supported one another.
Learning more about the events of that day and so many unsung heroes who went back to help, and growing up surrounded by a military community that continued to be impacted for many years after, created a strong interest in volunteering to serve. More specifically, it inspired my hope to one day contribute to the rescue mission as an Air Force helicopter pilot. I currently serve as a first-assignment instructor pilot for Undergraduate Helicopter Training, which has been an incredibly fulfilling assignment, with the opportunity to learn from other instructors with a wide array of experiences and the opportunity to interact with and instruct hundreds of students whom I will spend my career serving alongside, many of whom were not yet born on 9/11 and found their own calling toward service. In a few short months, I will begin initial training in the HH-60W to prepare for a follow-on assignment in the rescue community that continues to inspire me.
I recognize that I am likely one of the youngest people who has memories from that day. That realization led me to feel a sense of responsibility to keep sharing these stories as a way to honor the promise we made to “Never Forget.”
I was home in Alexandria, VA, visiting my parents in September 2025, just before the 24th anniversary of 9/11, and we could hardly believe that next year would mark 25 years since that day. As I reflected on what each anniversary had looked like over those 24 years, it felt like you could feel 9/11 fading from our collective memory in some ways. In elementary school, September 11th never went by without teachers spending a portion of the day talking about the significance of the date and that moment in our nation’s history. By the time I got to high school, I remember arriving at school on September 11th and seeing the flag flying at full staff when it should have been at half-staff in honor of those we lost. I missed my first two morning classes while tracking down someone to lower the flag in respect that day. Now, many schools don’t even teach about 9/11. I came up with the idea for Run to Remember out of a desire to find a way to fulfill our promise to “Never Forget” not just once a year every September, but every day. I wanted to do so in a way that truly acknowledged the human impact of the day and let families of the fallen know that we support them still 25 years later, so I decided to run a mile for every innocent life lost that day, with a name spoken aloud every mile—2,977 miles dedicated to 2,977 names of those who were taken from us too soon on September 11, 2001.
I hope this 25-year anniversary can be a moment for all of us to look inward and ask what that promise looks like for us as individuals and as neighbors. How do we continue to honor our promise for generations to come? How do we continue to support one another every day? How do we live each day as the caring and resilient people we proved to be on September 12, 2001?