09/11/2026
September 11, 2001 began as an ordinary Tuesday.
People left home for work. Children began their day. Police officers and firefighters reported for duty. Across the country, people moved through familiar morning routines expecting the day ahead to be much like the one before it.
For thousands of families, it wasn’t.
Twenty-five years later, perhaps that is one of the most important things to remember.
Before they became names etched into memorials or lives counted among those lost, they were people with somewhere to be that evening and someone expecting them home.
They were husbands and wives, sons and daughters, parents, friends, coworkers and neighbors.
They had plans for tomorrow.
Here in Marina, we remember the families who have now carried an absence for a quarter of a century. We remember the public servants whose final actions demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to people they had never met, and the countless acts of courage and humanity that emerged in the midst of unimaginable loss.
For those of us entrusted with serving our community today, there is humility in that memory.
Every day, public servants begin their shifts without knowing what the next call will ask of them. Most calls will never make history. They don’t need to.
Service is the quiet promise that when someone needs help, somebody will answer.
On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed what that promise can require.
A generation has now come of age knowing September 11 only through photographs, recordings, memorials—and the stories we choose to tell.
So we should tell them what happened.
But we should also tell them who was lost. Who remained behind. Who stepped forward. And why, 25 years later, it still matters.
Time has carried us forward.
It should never carry us so far that we forget.
Today, the Marina Police Department remembers those we lost and stands with the families who have carried their memory every day since.
Marina remembers.
— Chief Randy Hopkins
Marina Police Department
