Lisa Simpson Photography

The New York skyline before September 11, 2001. Photo by Lisa Kivett.

September 11 will always be more than a date on the calendar for me.

On September 11, 2001, I was living in New York City and based there as a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines. I had called in sick the night before and was sleeping when a phone call woke me and told me to turn on the television.

I remember staring at the screen, disoriented, almost feeling as though I were watching a horror movie. I could not comprehend what was happening.

Then I learned that one of the hijacked airplanes was United Airlines Flight 93.

My mother was a United Airlines flight attendant and occasionally worked trips between the West Coast and New York. Suddenly, all I could think was: Where is she? Is she working?

I called her. No answer.

I called my dad, who thankfully told me she was in Japan. My sister was in Ireland and spent hours trying to get through to the United States to find out whether my mother and I were safe. Phone lines throughout New York were overwhelmed.

Several close friends came to my apartment that day. We sat together, mostly in silence, watching the unimaginable unfold on television. The tears just kept coming.

I wanted desperately to do something - help search for survivors, volunteer, anything - but the news kept telling people to stay home.

Late that evening, a friend and neighbor arrived at my apartment covered from head to toe in ash. He worked at the World Trade Center and had escaped, walking much of the way home and across the Brooklyn Bridge. I will never forget the relief I felt seeing him standing there.

The next day, I tried to make my way downtown but could only get as far as Greenwich Village. I tried to volunteer with the Red Cross, but there was little they could allow us to do.

What I remember most was the silence.

New York City - always moving, always loud, always alive - was eerily quiet.

For weeks - maybe even months - thousands of photographs and missing-person posters lined subway walls, storefronts, buildings and almost any available space. Everywhere you looked were faces of people whose families and friends were desperately hoping they would still come home.

Memorials and photographs appeared throughout New York in the weeks following September 11. Photo by Lisa Kivett.

The smoke remained in the sky.

When I was eventually able to go to Ground Zero, it was almost impossible to comprehend what I was seeing. I had been to the World Trade Center many times. I had shopped in the mall beneath the towers and eaten at Windows on the World which was located on the 106^th and 107^th floors. I had even videotaped the view from the restaurant because it was so incredible. I had been at the towers only days before September 11.

Me in the World Trade Center plaza before September 11, 2001. Photo from my personal collection.

And suddenly, they were gone.

Where those buildings had stood were twisted steel, shattered glass and mountains of debris. The skyline I knew had changed forever.

Ground Zero, photographed during one of my visits after the attacks. Photo by Lisa Kivett.

I went back to Ground Zero several times, and on one visit I brought my camera. As I was taking photographs, a woman behind me criticized me for doing so.

I remember thinking that I wasn't taking pictures out of curiosity. This was history, this was what I was seeing in the city I lived in, and taking pictures was also one way I was trying to process what had happened.

Looking at those photographs 25 years later, I'm grateful that I took them.

For the past 25 years, September 11 has always been a day of reflection for me. After the attacks, I could never bring myself to work on that date. I always wanted to find a meaningful way to volunteer, but somehow the right opportunity never came along.

This year, it did.

Volunteers gathered in San Diego for the 9/11 Day Meal Pack on September 11, 2026.

On the 25th anniversary of September 11, I had the privilege of volunteering at the San Diego 9/11 Day Meal Pack with Delta Air Lines.

I was more emotional than I expected to be. At times, I found myself getting choked up.

There was something incredibly moving about spending this particular anniversary doing something good alongside so many people who had come together simply to serve.

For two hours, volunteers from numerous organizations worked side by side packing meals for local families. Each meal pack provides enough food for a family of six.

Delta had two tables at the event, and at our table alone we filled 17 cases, with 36 meal packs in each case.

Our Delta table hard at work during the two-hour meal pack.

Just some of the completed meal boxes from the San Diego 9/11 Day Meal Pack.

By the end of the San Diego event, together we had packed 192,456 meals.

Those meals will go home with children in the San Diego Unified School District to help feed their families.

Twenty-five years ago, sitting in my apartment in New York watching the unimaginable unfolding, all I wanted to do was help. I wanted to do something - anything - but there was so little any of us could do in those first hours and days.

Twenty-five years later, I finally had the opportunity to spend September 11 in exactly the way I had always hoped I could:

serving others.

And it felt incredibly good.

September 11 will always be a day of sadness, memories and reflection for me. But this year, it also left me feeling incredibly grateful - grateful that I had the opportunity to finally do something positive on a day that has always been so difficult for me, and grateful to see so many people come together to help others.

Never forget. And never stop asking, “How can I help?”