25 Years On, 9/11 Legacy Splits Between Heroism and Lingering Harm

Danny Lewin boarded American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11 2001 as a 31 year old tech entrepreneur and former Israeli commando. Born in Denver he had built a company that helped power the early internet and was already a billionaire by some measures. When hijackers took over the plane Lewin reportedly used his military training to fight back before being killed the first confirmed death of the attacks. His childhood friend Marco Greenberg says Lewin would have been incensed by what followed not the initial national unity but the later turn toward conspiracy theories political score settling and endless blame games that treat the day as another front in cultural combat.

Lewin grew up moving between America and Israel where he excelled in both bodybuilding contests and elite counterterrorism units. He studied at top schools and lived in Massachusetts with his wife and young sons when the planes hit. Greenberg recalls a man who called things straight and expected the same from others. The idea that the attacks would become fodder for division rather than a reminder of shared threats would have struck him as predictable yet disappointing.

That same day thousands of responders rushed into lower Manhattan. Among them was Mia Farina a rookie New York police officer who ran when the towers came down and later spent months working the debris field. She now lives on Long Island with chronic lung disease tied to the dust and toxins she inhaled. Farina describes stepping through rubble so deep it reached her thighs and feeling the remains of victims beneath her. What began as what she thought was pneumonia in 2014 turned into a permanent condition.

Tens of thousands of others share similar stories. The World Trade Center Health Program was created to cover their care yet funding has lagged behind the growing number of cases. Doctors and patients report long waits and uncertainty about whether the program can keep pace as more responders and survivors develop cancers respiratory illnesses and other conditions decades later. The federal commitment made in the wake of the attacks has not matched the scale of the ongoing medical need.

The contrast is stark. Lewin and the first responders acted without hesitation when the country faced an external attack. Their stories highlight competence under pressure and a willingness to confront danger directly. In the years since public discourse has shifted toward internal recriminations and identity based arguments that treat 9/11 as material for grievance rather than a shared loss. Greenberg notes the tragedy failed to produce lasting cohesion and instead fed narratives that obscure basic facts about who carried out the attacks and why.

Meanwhile the physical toll continues on those who cleared the site and treated the wounded. Farina and her neighbors on Long Island represent a community where illness remains common long after the television cameras left. The gap between the promises made to these Americans and the delivery of care reflects broader institutional shortfalls that persist regardless of which party holds power. The focus on division and reinterpretation of events has done little to address the concrete problems still facing the living victims of that morning.