Standing above the sunken USS Arizona during a December 2001 visit to Hawaii, New York Fire Department Chief Joseph Pfeifer watched family members of Sept. 11 victims and first responders remove the lei from around their necks and toss them into the water.

Read more PHOTOS: Warriors volleyball sweeps Cowgirls

“At that moment, two generations came together,” Pfeifer recalled. “Sixty years earlier was Pearl Harbor and a few months earlier was 9/11 — and there we joined together.”

For Pfeifer, who helped lead rescue and recovery efforts at Ground Zero and whose younger brother, FDNY Lt. Kevin Pfeifer, was among the 343 FDNY firefighters who died, that moment marked when he and others “started to look forward.”

“You could feel everybody there understanding the pain, but also understanding the hope for the future and the unity of two generations coming together,” he said.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, Hawaii, along with the rest of the nation, is reflecting on the lessons that remain relevant today: emergency preparedness, resilience, mental health, public service and national unity. Pfeifer said those lessons may be even more important now.

“I think that message, the 9/11 message, now becomes far more important this year than maybe other years,” he said. “People are looking for something to get past the challenges that we’re in now, and to care about each other.”

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks killed 2,977 people, including 441 first responders, after al- Qaida hijackers flew two commercial airliners into New York City’s World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought back.

Pfeifer said now is the time to move past the planes crashing or the buildings collapsing, “and look at my ordinary heroes.”

“That day we saw courageous kindness and caring for one another,” he said.

An estimated 100 million Americans are too young to remember the attacks firsthand, making the 25th anniversary both a time for reflection and an opportunity to pass those lessons on to a new generation.

Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said in a statement, “As we mark the 25th anniversary of September 11, an entire generation has now grown up with no personal memory of that day. For them, it is history. For so many of us, it remains deeply personal.”

Personal losses

The attacks took place about 5,000 miles from Hawaii, but nine people with Hawaii ties were among those killed: Heather Ho, Richard Lee, Maile Hale, Christine Snyder, Georgine Corrigan, Michael Collins, Richard Keane, Patricia Colodner and David Laychak.

Outdoor Circle President Diane Harding said the organization established the Christine Snyder Fund to support tree planting and environmental education projects in Snyder’s memory.

“Christine inspired us to look beyond ourselves and see the beauty and joy in nature,” Harding said. “Her legacy lives on in the many tree-planting projects she initiated across the islands, as well as in our hearts.”

Snyder and the other eight Hawaii victims will be honored during the City and County of Honolulu’s 25th anniversary remembrance ceremony Friday at 6 p.m. at Honolulu Hale.

Punahou School also will remember Lee, class of 1986, and Ho, class of 1987, during a private memorial Thursday morning.

Punahou President Mike Latham, a member of the class of 1986, lost Lee and Ho in the Sept. 11 attacks and also knew fellow Hawaii victim Maile Hale, who grew up on his street in Hawaii Kai. Latham was teaching at Fordham University in New York that day.

“Through the windows of the building where I was working, I could see the towers come down,” Latham said.

For weeks after the terrorist attacks, he said that he would pass full commuter parking lots, and was “reminded of the fact that these were people who never went home.”

The experience was so emotionally devastating that he waited nearly 15 years before visiting the National September 11 Memorial &Museum. When he finally did, he found reassurance in the way the victims were remembered.

“They weren’t erased, they weren’t wiped away,” Latham said. “No matter how violent and devastating the attacks were … they couldn’t take away those memories and those legacies.”

Read more Tropical Storm Norbert forms in Pacific

Latham remembered Lee, who was killed at age 34 while working for Cantor Fitzgerald in One World Trade Center, as “truly brilliant” and “an incredible Renaissance” figure whose career was on a “rapid upward trajectory.”

“He was the kind of person who would just leave everybody either laughing because what he was saying was so funny or just really kind of pondering what he had just said because it was so profound,” Latham said.

Latham also reflected on the loss of Ho, who was 32 and working as the executive pastry chef at the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center.

“She was in my sister’s class, so one year behind me, and is very much remembered by lots of people from that class including some Punahou faculty who are here today, who were good friends of hers,” he said.

‘It can’t
be forgotten’

While Sept. 11 is a time to reflect on those who died, it is also important to hear from survivors such as Pablo Sanchez, who escaped from the 92nd floor of Tower 2. Now living on Hawaii island and working remotely for HIMI, Sanchez was employed by Aon at the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11.

He remembers chatting with co-workers and complaining about having to take a tedious insurance certification class when the sky suddenly darkened outside and then he saw orange flames.

“It was so bright that you kind of felt the radiant heat,” Sanchez recalls.

Without fully understanding what had happened, Sanchez headed for the stairs and eventually made his way to safety from the 92nd floor. Near the 42nd floor, he felt the building shake when United Airlines Flight 175 struck Tower 2.

Even after reaching the street, Sanchez believed the evacuation might be temporary and that he eventually would return to work, where he had left his breakfast sandwich and knapsack.

Only later, after relatives of his friends and co-workers began calling in search of missing loved ones, did the horror fully sink in.

“I was crying,” he said. “I felt really bad.”

Sanchez said he struggled for years with survivor’s guilt, anger and grief. He said that his move to Hawaii in 2014 was a fresh start.

Sanchez believes this milestone 9/11 anniversary should serve as a reminder that Americans should not assume they are immune from tragedy or danger.

“You know, it can’t be forgotten. We have to remember,” he said.“You can’t take your easy life for granted. Tha’s a hard thing to say to people because everybody doesn’t think their life is easy — even if it’s easy.”

Former Hawaii island mayor and longtime civil defense administrator Harry Kim remembers 9/11 as a test of emergency preparedness and a lesson in public trust. After receiving a call shortly after 4 a.m. Hawaii time that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, Kim activated Hawaii island’s emergency response and made the controversial decision to close all schools on Hawaii island amid widespread uncertainty.

“I found out later I was the only one in the whole state that closed all the schools,” Kim said. “ I have absolutely no regret to doing that.”

A 24-year Civil Defense veteran, Kim said the attacks reinforced the importance of public confidence in emergency officials and fundamentally changed Americans’ sense of security. He compared the shock of 9/11 to Pearl Harbor, when Americans suddenly realized they were vulnerable to attack.

Kim said the lasting lesson of 9/11 is the unity that followed in the immediate aftermath.

Communities are strongest, he said, when people trust one another and work together. Kim said that was true of 9/11, Hurricane Iniki and the recent Kona-low storms and Hurricane Lala.

At 87, Kim said he often takes to Hawaii island roadsides to wave “Peace and Aloha” signs, a reminder in these polarized days of the importance of communities coming together as they did after 9/11.

“We remember how we felt,” he said. “We must work towards getting back to who we were.”

Read more Ka’eo Akana had September to remember with a baby, standout game