9/11 is becoming history. My generation must make sure America never forgets

I was 9 years old, in my second week of middle school, 25 miles from lower Manhattan when the world changed.

I remember being gathered on the carpeted floor of our homeroom when the principal’s aide delivered a note to our teacher.

She read it to us with a perplexed look on her face, unaware that the plane she described as having been involved in a tragic accident had passed just a few miles from our school along the Hudson River only minutes earlier.

We’d soon learn this was no accident.

9/11 MUSEUM CEO REFLECTS ON LASTING IMPACT OF TERROR ATTACKS AS AMERICA MARKS 250TH BIRTHDAY We were too young to understand the magnitude of what was happening, but old enough to know something was terribly wrong.

For millennials, September 11, 2001 was the moment that divided our lives into "before" and "after." There is an innocence in the photographs and memories from before 9/11 that is hard to explain.

The people and the streets look the same, but everything feels different because we know what they did not yet know was about to happen.

MASSIVE PIECE OF 9/11 HISTORY MAKES STUNNING 10,500-MILE JOURNEY ACROSS AMERICA And in the weeks and months after that tragic day, everything changed.

We remember the anthrax scares, the new airport security measures, and the fear that another attack could happen at any moment.

But we should remember something else, too: the extraordinary sense of unity that followed.

For a kid growing up just outside New York City, the shared sense of patriotism and American flags seemingly everywhere is impossible to forget.

In those days, before social media became a force for division and politics consumed so much of our national conversation, Americans seemed determined to stand together.

I LOST MY WIFE ON 9/11.

PLEASE LET THIS 25TH ANNIVERSARY BELONG TO THE FAMILIES I still vividly remember watching President George W.