# Strength in Remembrance: 25 Years Since 9/11

By Brad Johnson (@bradjohnson) · Published 2026-09-11

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Twenty-five years ago I was at my desk, working a normal morning, when the reports started coming in. Like so many Americans, my coworkers and I gathered in my boss's office and turned on the TV, and we watched in silence as the morning we thought we understood came apart. I still remember, very vividly, the grim feeling that came over my body as it was happening — that cold certainty that nothing would ever be quite the same. It wasn't fear for myself. It was grief for a country I suddenly understood was not invincible.

In the days that followed, the country did something it doesn't often manage to do: it pulled together. Hours after the attacks, around 150 members of Congress from both parties spontaneously sang \\"God Bless America\\" together on the steps of the Capitol — not planned, someone just started singing and the rest joined in (KDKA). That moment, Americans first.

I have carried that feeling into the office every day since, through work that in its own small way is about helping people build and move forward — from FHA loans for first-time buyers to VA loans for the families who serve us all — and I've now spent 26 years doing it across the country's deepest economic shifts.

## The unity that tested us

It would be dishonest to pretend that unity simply lasted. In the years since, partisan animosity and institutional distrust have grown, and we can barely talk to each other about politics ([KDKA](https://www.audacy.com/kdkaradio/news/local/remember-national-unity-followed-9-11-attacks)). A skeptic could say the togetherness of those weeks was a passing moment — real, but gone. That objection deserves an honest answer. The unity in the immediate aftermath was never meant to be a permanent state; it was a glimpse of what we are capable of when the stakes are clear. What has endured is the quieter, steadier thing underneath it: the capacity to rebuild, to help our neighbors, and to keep going when circumstances say otherwise.

## Carrying it forward

Remembrance does not end when the ceremony does. It shows up in the everyday choice to build rather than withdraw — to help a first-time buyer finance their first FHA home, to set up a VA loan for a family that has given so much, to sit across the table from someone at a difficult moment and find a way forward. That is my small version of the same American instinct, and it is available to every reader today, whatever your work is. If you're ready to build or move forward yourself, we can start a conversation at www.gmfsmortgage.com/brad.johnson.

## Twenty-six years at the desk

That same spirit is how I read the quarter-century that followed in my own line of work. I've spent 26 years in mortgage lending, and I've watched the country absorb one shock after another. After the 2001 attacks, the Federal Reserve lowered the federal funds rate rapidly to steady an economy already tilting into recession, from 6.5 percent in late 2000 to 1.75 percent by December 2001 ([Federal Reserve Speech](https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20100103a.htm)). Homeownership climbed for years afterward, peaking around 69 percent in 2005 as credit expanded ([Federal Reserve History](https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-recession-and-its-aftermath)). Then came the collapse of 2007–2009, a crisis that redefined my industry for good ([Federal Reserve History](https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-recession-and-its-aftermath)). Through every cycle, the pattern held: the country takes the blow, then quietly builds again.

## Remembering the 2,977

At the center of this anniversary are numbers that deserve to stay human: [2,977 innocent lives were lost that day](https://www.fortmillsc.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=842) — firefighters, police officers, flight crews, office workers, parents and children from around the world. Across the country towns mark the moments: the ringing of bells at 8:46 a.m., a ceremonial reading of the names of the 412 first responders who died, a field of flags planted on a town-hall lawn ([Fort Mill, SC](https://www.fortmillsc.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=842)). Remembrance, in other words, is not one day in New York. It happens in small towns everywhere, and it is how the country has chosen to hold on to what it lost.

![American flag flying as a memorial tribute on the 25th anniversary of 9/11](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1618420138990-25842589a7c4?cs=tinysrgb&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w5Mzk0NDN8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwxfHxBbWVyaWNhbiUyMGZsYWclMjBtZW1vcmlhbCUyMHRyaWJ1dGUlMjBza3l8ZW58MHwwfHx8MTc4OTE0MjgyN3ww&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1200&h=630&fit=crop&crop=entropy)

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