Dan Barry Revisits 9/11 After 25 Years, Tracing 2,753 Deaths and Enduring Grief
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Sep 11
Dan Barry Revisits 9/11 After 25 Years, Tracing 2,753 Deaths and Enduring Grief
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Sep 11
Summary
Twenty-five years after 9/11, New York Times writer Dan Barry revisits Lower Manhattan and recounts how fleeting memories still return with undimmed force for those who witnessed the attacks.
Barry ties that persistence to scenes he covered in 2001: a near-empty Circle Line boat facing the burning skyline, refrigerated trailers holding remains, and the call telling him a firefighter friend was missing.
The essay folds personal memory into the scale of the disaster — planes struck in 77 minutes, 343 firefighters died, and 1,099 of the 2,753 people killed in the World Trade Center collapse still have not been identified.
Barry also recalls what public memory often drops: xenophobia, scams, disputes over honoring the dead, toxic exposure at ground zero, and grief so pervasive it shaped funerals, tattoos and clashes among responders.
His return to the memorial plaza ends on one lasting image — a sanitation worker sweeping beside the ruins — as a metaphor for a city that moved forward while never fully escaping the dust of Sept. 11.
Now that most young adults only know 9/11 through textbooks, is the raw emotional memory of that day slowly fading into forgotten history?
As deaths from toxic exposure now surpass the tragedy's original toll, what is the true, hidden human cost of the September 11 attacks?
With groundbreaking DNA technology unlocking decades-old mysteries, will the remaining 1,100 unidentified victims of 9/11 finally be returned to their families?