Here's a good 9/11-related story. I hope this kid does well.
https://outline.com/dnaG5e
Photo: Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal
When Jake Campbell entered orientation at his dream school, the University of Michigan, this summer, he relayed a message to his college adviser: On Sept. 11, he would need to be in New York City for the 17th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
“It’s important for me to be back,” he told the adviser.
At the annual memorial on Tuesday where the Twin Towers once stood,
the ceremony followed its ritual of relatives taking turns reading the names of the 2,983 victims before a crowd of mourners and officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
For the 17-year-old Mr. Campbell and others his age who had a parent killed that day, the memorial was slightly different this year. Some had to return from college to the event that honors relatives they can’t remember.
Mr. Campbell wasn’t even a year old when his mother, Jill Maurer-Campbell, an administrative assistant in the South Tower, called to tell the family that the North Tower had been struck. Mr. Campbell said she didn’t know whether there would be an evacuation.She said “that she’d call later and that she’s fine,” relatives told him.
But moments later, the South Tower—and the 78th floor where she worked—got hit. His mother died at the age of 31.
His maternal grandfather, Joe Maurer, a firefighter, and his father, Steven Campbell, a New York Police Department officer, spent the next days digging through rubble and exposing themselves to the toxic air that plagued much of lower Manhattan. “They were I guess living with the hope that she was out there somewhere,” Mr. Campbell said. “It was a powerful thing.”
They recovered her wallet but never found her body. Mr. Maurer died in September 2014 from cancer that his doctors said he got from recovery efforts at Ground Zero.
In 2017, just five months before Mr. Campbell found out he was accepted into his top college choice in Ann Arbor, Mich., his father had a fatal heart attack. It is unclear if his death was related to his work after the 9/11 attacks, he said.
Mr. Campbell said he always imagined his father and grandfather joining him on move-in day. “There were pieces missing when I moved in,” he said.
Jacob Campbell left a ‘Michigan Mom’ shirt at the memorial for his mother, Jill Maurer-Campbell, who died on 9/11. Mr. Campbell was an infant at the time and is now a student at the University of Michigan. Photo: Jacob Campbell
The teenager said his family was always active with the 9/11 Memorial & Museum as he was growing up. Other relatives of victims of the attacks took notice. “They clearly instilled that sense of civic duty and civic pride in Jake,” said Anthony Gardner, senior vice president of government and community affairs at the museum.
The children of victims “are perpetuating their loved ones’ memory,” said Mr. Gardner, whose brother was killed in the attacks. “They’re walking in their footsteps and they’re keeping them present and alive.”
This year’s ceremony, without his father and grandfather, felt different for Mr. Campbell. He went with his maternal grandmother and spent time at the reflecting pool that marks where the South Tower stood and where his mother’s name is engraved, feeling a new sense of loss.
After the memorial, he walked away to begin his journey back to school—but not before covering his mother’s name with a sweater that read, “Michigan Mom.”