NEW YORK — A poignant phrase resonates as relatives of 9/11 victims gather each year to remember the loved ones they lost the terrorist attacks.
“I’ve never met you.”
It is the sound of generational change at Ground Zero, where family members read out the names of the victims on each anniversary of the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people were killed when al-Qaeda hijackers crashed four jets into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in southwestern Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.
Some names are read out by children or young adults born after the strikes. Last year’s commemoration 28 such youngsters among more than 140 readers. Youngsters are expected again at the ceremony on Wednesday this year.
Some are the children of victims whose partners were pregnant. More of the young readers are nieces, nephews or grandchildren of victims. They have inherited stories, photographs and a sense of solemn responsibility.
Being a “9/11 family” echoes through generations, and to remember and understanding the September 11 attacks in the future will depend on a world that no longer remembers them.
“It’s like passing the torch,” says Allan Aldycki, 13.
He has read out the names of his grandfather and several other people over the past two years and plans to do so again on Wednesday. Aldycki keeps mementos of his grandfather, Allan Tarasiewicz, a firefighter, in his room.
The teenager told the audience last year that he had heard so much about his grandfather that he felt like he knew him, “but still I wish I had the chance to really get to know you,” he added.
Allan volunteered to read because it makes him feel closer to his grandfather, and he hopes his children will join in too.
“It’s an honor to teach them because you get to show them their heritage and what they should never forget,” he said by phone from central New York. He said he himself teaches peers who know little to nothing about 9/11.
When the ceremony takes place, he looks up information about the lives of each person whose name he is to read out.
“He reflects on everything and understands how important it is to someone,” said his mother, Melissa Tarasiewicz.
Reciting the names of the dead is a tradition that extends beyond Ground Zero. War memorials honor fallen soldiers by reading their names aloud. Some Jewish organizations organize readings of the names of Holocaust victims on the international day of remembrance, Yom Hashoah.
The names of the 168 people killed in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City are read annually at the monument there.
On September 11, at Pentagon commemorations, military personnel or officials are invited to read the names of the 184 people who died. At the Flight 93 National Memorial, family members and friends of the victims read the list of the 40 passengers and crew who lost their lives at the rural site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The hours-long commemoration at the 9/11 Memorial in New York is devoted almost exclusively to the names of the 2,977 victims at all three locations, plus the six people who died in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993They are all read by volunteer family members and are chosen by lottery.
Each is given a subset of names to tell aloud. Readers also typically speak briefly about their own lost relatives, often in moving detail.
“I often think about how, if you were still here, you would have been one of my best friends, going to colleges with me, bailing me out of trouble with Mom and Dad, and hanging out on the Jersey shore,” Capri Yarosz said last year of her slain uncle, New York firefighter Christopher Michael Mozzillo.
Now 17, she grew up with a homemade baby book about him and a family that still mentions him in everyday conversations.
“Chris would have loved that” is a statement we often hear in our house.
She read twice during the ceremony at the trade center.
“It means a lot to me that I can keep my uncle’s name alive and just keep reading everybody else’s name so that more of the future generations will know,” she said by phone from her family’s home in central New Jersey. “I feel good that I can pass on the importance of what happened.”
Her two younger sisters also read names, and one of them is preparing to do so again on Wednesday. Their mother, Pamela Yarosz, has never been able to bring herself to register.
“I don’t have that strength. It’s too hard for me,” says Pamela Yarosz, Mozzillo’s sister. “They are braver.”
In the meantime, many of the children of 9/11 victims — like Melissa Tarasiewicz, who was just out of high school when her father died — are long since adults. But about 100 were born after One of their parents was killed in the attacks. They are now both young adults.
“Although we have never met, I am honored to carry your name and legacy with me. I thank you for giving me this life and this family,” Manuel DaMota Jr. said of his father, a woodworker and project manager, during last year’s ceremony.
One after another, young readers remembered aunts, uncles, great-uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers who the children had missed all their lives.
“My whole life my father has said I reminded him of you.”
“I wish you could take me fishing.”
“I wish I had more of you than just a picture on a frame.”
“Even though I never met you, I will never forget you.”