How the 9/11 Generation Is Passing Down Their Shared History

Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, a generation has grown up in the shadow of the event. To commemorate the anniversary, our guests reflect on how 9/11 affected their childhoods and how becoming parents or interacting with a younger generation has shifted their perspective.

When Matthew John Bocchi lost his dad, an employee at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center, on 9/11, he was just 9 years old. In the aftermath, Bocchi became fixated on learning every detail of his dad’s death, and his trauma spiraled into drug abuse. He wrote about all of it in his memoir "Sway." Bocchi, now a father himself, reflects on how he celebrates his father’s life, why the historic event affected his childhood, and what his children and others struggling with mental health challenges and addiction can learn through his experience.

Slate magazine writer Aymann Ismail was an 11-year-old at an Islamic private school in northern New Jersey when the Sept. 11 attacks happened. Now a father of two, Ismail talks about how his community reacted and was treated and how the post-9/11 experience has shaped his life and the lives of generations of Muslim Americans.

At least a third of Americans alive today are not old enough to remember the events of 9/11. As we look to the future, Megan Jones, vice president of education programming at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, explains how her group helps a new generation of students and teachers understand why 9/11 has shaped the culture and politics of the world they have inherited.

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