(Photo: Matthew Pillsbury)

“I was born on September 10, 2001. The next day, the hospital was on lockdown, and my parents were confused, and they saw the smoke rising from over Manhattan. My father used to work in that building. As a child, I always thought about it as something that went wrong; I always thought it was an accident. I didn’t really understand the act. At the museum I saw the composite, five floors stuck together of one of the buildings, compressed by heat and pressure into four feet. I felt pretty terrible about what happened to all those people. I think of it as a time when we were all in fear, but it was also a time when we lent a hand to help one another.”

—Jason Remy, 13, who visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum on September 18.
As told to Katie Van Syckle.