Friday, September 11, 2026, is Patriot Day, and it is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the morning the United States was attacked. On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists hijacked four airliners. Two were flown into the World Trade Center in New York. One struck the Pentagon. The fourth, United Flight 93, was forced down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew fought back. Nearly three thousand people were killed. They were civilians at their desks, service members and civilian employees at the Pentagon, first responders who ran toward the fire, and the men and women aboard those aircraft.
Congress established Patriot Day so the nation would not let the date slip into ordinary time. Flags are flown at half-staff. At 8:46 a.m. Eastern—the minute the first aircraft struck the North Tower—many communities observe a moment of silence. The point is not ceremony for its own sake. It is to name what was taken, and to remember who answered.
For this Post, the anniversary is not abstract. A generation of VFW members earned their eligibility in the wars that followed: Afghanistan, Iraq, and the long fight against the network that planned the attacks. Some of our comrades were already veterans on that Tuesday morning and watched a new war begin. Others were still in high school. All of us live in a country that was forced, in a single morning, to remember that liberty has enemies and that the people who defend it have names, families, and zip codes of their own.
Twenty-five years is long enough for children who were not yet born in 2001 to vote, to enlist, and to sit in this hall. It is not long enough to forget. The proper tribute is not only a lowered flag. It is the same work we already claim as our own: looking after the veteran who came home changed, teaching the next generation what the date means, and remaining a Post that a Gold Star family can walk into without having to explain themselves.
On September 11, fly the flag. Pause at 8:46 if you can. If you know a family that lost someone that day, or in the wars that followed, check on them. Then come to the Post on the 14th. Memory without comradeship is only a calendar square. We can do better than that.