History is passed down in our fire departments
History is often perceived as something static — a collection of events consigned to textbooks, memorialized in museums, or commemorated on anniversaries. It can feel as though history lives on dusty bookshelves, far removed from our daily lives.
But history isn’t merely a record of the past, frozen in time. Rather, it is a living, breathing thing, continuously shaping the present and influencing the future.
History evolves as it is interpreted, re-examined and passed down through generations. One way to understand its dynamic nature is by noting how institutions like fire departments are now hiring young people who were born after Sept. 11, 2001 — a day that still feels so recent and vivid to many of us.
This milestone is a potent reminder that history is an ever-evolving force that defines generational perspectives, values and narratives.
Many of us remember where we were and what we were doing on 9/11, as do members of older generations who remember where they were when they heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot, or that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.
For firefighters — and especially those who serve in New York City and on Long Island — no date holds deeper meaning than Sept. 11. The bravery of the many first responders who ran toward the hellish chaos at the World Trade Center, intending to save lives, has become emblematic of the courage and sacrifice inherent in their profession.
That fire departments are now hiring people who were not alive when the towers fell highlights the inevitability of generational change and the idea that history is always moving forward, even when it feels as if time has stood still.
These young recruits are entering a world shaped by the consequences of 9/11, yet they engage with it in a different way. For them, Sept. 11 is, yes, history, but not a memory — a chapter learned in school rather than a harrowing, indelible life experience.
This generational shift forces us to confront the duality of history: it is at once deeply personal and profoundly collective. For those of us who lived through 9/11 — and particularly the millions who could see the smoking wreckage from their homes or offices, with no need of a television screen — the event has become part of the fabric of our lives. For those born afterward, it is something learned about and appreciated through second-hand accounts.
Nonetheless, their presence in firefighting gear yet to be soiled signals that history is alive, breathing new life into the institutions that helped shape it. Eerily similar to the refrain repeated by Jewish people immersed in their own living history since the Holocaust, “Never again,” fire departments across the United States, as far removed from New York as Alaska, echo the phrase, “Never forget.”
There, the Kenai Fire Department — more than 4,500 miles from ground zero — commemorates 9/11 every year as if its members, too, were just a truck ride from where the planes hit.
“The greatest thing we can do to honor the lives lost on 9/11 is to strive to be the people we were on Sept. 12, when we all came together, we all felt like one nation, one people,” Jay Teague, chief of the Kenai department, said at its Sept. 11 ceremony last week, as reported by KDLL public radio. “We get lost in the daily strife, the daily frustrations, and we lose that sometimes, but I think that’s probably the best sentiment we can end on, is that we should strive to be the people we were on Sept. 12.”
As young recruits join firehouses in New York City, on Long Island and across the country, they bring with them a new understanding of public service, informed not only by the legacy of 9/11, but the challenges they have faced in the post-9/11 world, marked by heightened security, shifting global politics, a pandemic and a divided country.
This generational handoff underscores the vitality of history. It is not static; it does not belong solely to the past. Rather, it lives on through the people who reinterpret it and shape it anew.
