Twenty-Five Years — Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and a Field in Sandwich

Twenty-five years ago this morning.

My daughter Grace lives in a high-rise built near Ground Zero. I went to see her there in the spring, and we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge talking about her future. She knows what happened there. Of course she does. But she has no memory of it, and I didn't understand the difference between those two things until I was standing next to her on that corner.

I carry the memories of that morning in my heart. She carries a city in hers.

I photographed the site over several years from a window above it, while it was being rebuilt.

We lived in Sandwich, on Cape Cod, then. My son's best friend's father was one of the two fighter pilots on air defense alert at Otis that morning. The call came at 8:37. They were airborne by 8:52, and by the time they could see the smoke, there was nothing left to prevent.

Our town lost Captain Gerald DeConto at the Pentagon. He was inside planning the Navy's response to New York when the plane came into his side of the building. Most of the people near him lived because he had already sent them away from the danger.

Years later I chaired our Community Preservation Committee, and I steered our town to put half a million dollars into a football field and track at the high school that had sat condemned for fifteen years. Not everybody wanted to. Dave DeConto sat on that committee with me, a friend of mine and Gerald's brother, and he put his brother's name forward for it. It got built. It carries his name. Every graduating class since has received a diploma on that field.

Two hundred and six people from Massachusetts died that day. Both planes had left from Logan.

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