11. September 2026

“Never Forget” and the Significance of Memoir

Hayden Panettiere summarizes the experience of many NYC millennials on September 11, 2001, in her 2026 memoir “This is Me: A Reckoning”

Regardless of your impression of the government’s response in its aftermath, it is indisputable that the events on the morning of 9/11/2001 stained the fabric of our nation forever.

Most of us can recall where and what we were doing as the news rippled across the country.

Even at the tender age of three, I still remember fragmented details: eating breakfast at the dining table of my family’s small apartment, my mother’s sharp gasp upon answering my aunt’s call, the way she preempted my episode of Teletubbies on PBS for live coverage of the smoldering towers.

Any protest ready to fly off my tongue at having my favorite show disrupted stalled at the images flooding the screen. Those replays of the plane striking the South Tower stamped themselves into my little brain, as did the panic in my mother’s voice as she alerted my father over the phone and asked him to come home.

The ensuing hours consisted of shock and grief as news poured in. Every station ran the same footage, shared the same comments. There were calls from reporters nearby, someone who was actually in one of the towers, and rumors of other strikes that may or may not be related.

Then, the unthinkable collapse of each skyscraper. My mother had traveled to New York years before and purchased a frosted glass etching of the skyline. When lit, the Twin Towers stood together in stark contrast to the Empire State Building on the other side. My gaze flit between it and the images on the screen, especially that evening when the gap left behind was all too apparent. I couldn’t comprehend how that could even be possible in the span of a single day. The unsinkable ship had vanished beneath the waves.

Even now, I can feel the uncertainty of that day. I’d never heard adults sound so out of control, so helpless and… small. I felt as equipped that day as anyone else in our nation, listening to the president confirm that fear hovered in the air.

I was in South Florida, at the time, and fortunate to not know anyone in the vicinity of any attacks that day, which of course also included the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, intended for the White House or Capitol Building, that passengers bravely downed in Pennsylvania. My mother was nearly a decade removed from her years spent as a flight attendant, employed by an airline not based domestically.

With that in mind, I do not feel equipped to speak with much authority on this subject — especially not on this 25th anniversary. But I recently stumbled upon a very succinct and intimate portrayal of the vast, deep wounds this tragedy wrought upon many lives, both in the moment and long after.

In her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, the late actress Hayden Panettiere describes the day candidly. She does not give herself much credit for her proximity to the damage: she was born and raised in the NYC metropolitan area, but more than that, her father, Alan “Skip” Panettiere, was a longtime member of FDNY. In fact, he retired in January 2001 from his position as lieutenant of Engine 4, Tower Ladder 15 — one of the first responding crews on the scene after the first tower was struck. Located in Manhattan’s Financial District, they were responsible for a sizable stretch of the East River, as well as several skyscrapers in the surrounding area.

Hayden opens this chapter as a love letter to her father’s colleagues and their families, whom she regularly spent time alongside for holidays and summer events. She describes the solace she found in chili dinners served to their extended family at the station they were always welcomed in with bear hugs. She positions her father as a “social butterfly,” a friend to everyone he engaged with in his twenty years of service to the city. She’d never actually feared losing him or expected any devastating news regarding his colleagues.

When she segues into the events of that day, she frames it in proximity to a Labor Day picnic they attended the weekend before, where they “drank too much soda and played volleyball for hours, then ran around with the children of firefighters I’d known my entire life…” summarizing the occasion as “magical.”

On the morning in question — the subject of a chapter fittingly entitled “Never Forget”— we find Hayden in a middle school math class. The principal declares over the PA, “there is a small fire in the World Trade Center”and summons every child with a parent working in Manhattan.

“About half the class stood up.”

She goes on to describe the chaos that slowly unfolds, as well as how composed the teachers of the school respond in retrospect, acknowledging that they “knew every bit of what was going on that morning, but they didn’t say anything.” Hayden’s father is among the parents arriving to pick them up and she trusts he’ll have answers about the alleged fire. She highlights how, because of him, she knew those buildings were structurally sound. A fire alone should not escalate such alarm, especially with the abrupt cancellation of school.

She reflects that when she got in the car, “he pulled me into a big, bone-crushing hug, and part of me realized it was to comfort him as much as me.”

In lieu of paraphrasing further, the following are direct excerpts from the remainder of the chapter:

“There’s nothing more noteworthy or important about my experience of 9/11 than a lot of people’s. I just want to honor my dad’s friends, the fourteen firefighters — including one captain — who rushed to the Twin Towers immediately after the first plane hit and died at Ground Zero.”

"I decided to write about September 11 because that day serves as a defining moment for my generation. It was… the first time many of us truly felt vulnerable… the only time we’d experienced that degree of loss in only a few hours.

“That day changed our relationship with our parents, too. I never saw my dad cry, but I’m sure he did eventually, after the shock and sadness had settled into his bones. Or maybe it was after he went down to Ground Zero a day or so later and began to dig through the rubble, searching for the bodies of his friends…

“I was proud of Dad. He’d lived through death, which is the hardest part of living, and now he was showing me how to do it with grace… He’d been in the business of saving lives, but at Ground Zero, there was no one left to save.”

Sharing her words without mentioning my intent would be an immense disservice to Hayden’s life, legacy, and the courage it took her to write and release this memoir. I do not ever want to tarnish that with the selection of excerpts I choose to highlight, nor with my comments and opinions about them. This is just one of 46-chapters in her memoir, and I intend to share more examples that shine light on the struggles she endured in her short time here with us, and how her portrayal of them remains striking and meaningful.

Panettiere’s vulnerability in sharing this poignant portrayal masterfully demonstrates the meaning behind memoir as a medium. Many people employ this genre to cement a legacy or brag about successes in life, often missing the opportunity to highlight specific, relatable traumas, events, and hideous backstories they overcame and even still endure. These moments can bear truth to power, offer an element of reconciliation to reader and writer alike, and continue to speak for you long after you depart this earth.

Though Hayden is not here to tell us how momentous today’s anniversary is to her, people who weren’t even alive to bear witness to the terror attacks are able to live it vicariously through her recollection here. Her voice was incredibly impactful onscreen, and it persists today, just as powerfully, in her written word.

The real magic reflected by this genre is how enduring the sentiments around any subject, no matter how heavy or trivial they seem to their author at the time of writing. Well composed, insightful opinions like Hayden’s bring a level of candor that transcends the passage of time.

“9/11 taught us the true meaning of resilience, breaking us but making us tougher because we simply couldn’t fall apart.”

For all observing the 25th anniversary today, my heart is with you. For anyone who lost loved ones to this immense tragedy — instantly or in the decades that followed— your strength is a testament to the human condition, and I hope we can all honor those lives with brevity and compassion. We will never forget them.

Today is not a day for ostentatious celebrations or political pandering; it is an occasion for tribute to the great courage and respect we can, and should, show each other.

Please take care of yourself, tell someone you love them, and stay safe.

~ Cass