09.05.2026

0:00Hello, parents. As you brave the excitement and chaos of back to school, remember that now is the perfect time to start maximizing your kids' math skills, ramping up their reading or helping them slay science. Make IXL their go-to. It's an online learning platform back by 75 scientific studies and trusted by 15 million K through 12 students in the U.S. alone. It's flexible and personalized and adding IXL to the school day research shows adds to test scores. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now. Kid news listeners can get 20% off IXL memberships when they sign up today at IXL.com-Kidnews. That's IXL.com-Kidnews for the most effective learning program out there at the best price. Good morning and welcome to Kidnews.com-Bos. I'm Tori. Today is Saturday, September 5, 2026, just six days before the 25th anniversary of a tragic

1:04and pivotal day in our nation's history. On September 11, 2001, 19 men from the Middle East commandeered passenger planes out of Boston, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. and used them to slam into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon. Heroes on a fourth plane prevented it from reaching a fourth American target. The U.S. was brought to its knees. It was a modern day Pearl Harbor, a surprise attack that took thousands of lives and significantly changed life as we knew it. Those of us old enough to remember will certainly never forget. But what about future generations? Will that day significance be lost to the passage of time? What if we talk about it? One of our listeners, Andrew Dominguez of Miami, Florida, agrees. But I really think it should be brought up more often when our teachers too. Because it's such an important part of our history that we really need to understand that that day was really important. Yes, it was and yes, it is. And it's the subject of today's Kidnews.com-Bos.

2:06Here's Mark. On this week's program, we are talking about the national remembrance and the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on this country, September 11, 2001. My first guest is a dear friend whom I've known for almost 40 years. Let me introduce Jim Taylor, who tragically lost his brother Michael on 9-11, 25 years ago. Jim, thanks for being with us here. Oh, Mark, it's an honor. Yeah, let's give our listeners a little background. You and I met working at a TV station in Pensacola, Florida back in 1987. We worked there together for five years. And this is kind of bittersweet to have this discussion, but I think it's important we talk about it. Well, it's important we talk about it. And I have to say, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so. I haven't shared a lot of my thoughts on what happened that day over the years. It's for a number of reasons, but when you called it asked and knowing that you were a mentor to me all those years ago, that I knew you would share stories and thoughts and remembrances

3:10in a way that helped other families understand the impact of that day. Well, let's talk about that because it's been 25 years since this happened. What do you hope this anniversary accomplishes? I keep hearing people use the phrases, always remember and never forget it. I think that's important, those themes. Those themes are important and what I want to continue to occur are just conversations around the events of that day and the impact of those lives that were lost had on all of us. And it's through those conversations that we help those who were personally impacted by what happened that day. But having those conversations helps share that information with a younger generation and just gives them some insight. Because we can look at pictures on a screen, we can listen to speakers talk about this or that. But really, it's when we give people a reason to care by telling them a story of how this impacted them. That's when we can really make some headway into sharing those experiences with other generations.

4:14But it's also a very personal story. Tell us about Michael Taylor, your brother, who was he? What was special about him? My brother was six years older than I was. We had an age difference there to where when he was in high school and then into college, I was just the little younger brother punk running around and always trying to get his time and things of that nature. So after he went to college and then he ended up in New York City. My brother became a high yield bond trader. He worked for a company called Cantor Fitzgerald. He worked in the North Tower at the World Trade Center. So he was on the 104th floor. I don't know. Knowing my brother, I believe he would have been doing everything he could to find a way out of that building that day. He wasn't able to make it out. And there wasn't like a phone call home to his mom or to a spouse that said, I've got sure what happened here. I love you. You know, he was busy trying to solve the problem because he was a very logical thinker. He had a problem presented and he was going to try and solve it. Well God bless his soul.

5:15You know, at Kid News, one of our goals is the foster discussions and that's why we invited you at our news and current events. Not only do kids listen to our podcast, but they often listen with mom and dad at home or in the car or in the classroom with their teachers. What have you and your wife, Condi, discussed with your boys over the years and I know will be your boys and now both adult grown children. Yes, my oldest child was three years old. My second child was born about six months after September 11th. In fact, my wife and I, along with my sister and my brother-in-law, we all four went up to New York just a few days after everything happened because we're trying to figure out what's going on like everybody else was. I mean, there was still just a lot of uncertainty where people were and the extent of the magnitude of what have occurred that day. Over the years, as my children grew up and they got older, they recognized that I wasn't, I didn't speak a whole lot about what happened that day and I think part of that is because I grew up in a family where it really wasn't encouraged for us to share our emotions. I'm not saying that's a good or it wasn't, that's just the way things were, you know, I guess

6:19back then. But over the years, I realized that as my kids started feeling more comfortable asking questions and then I started feeling more comfortable just sharing information. I would do so readily and as long as there are one to listen, I would talk about it, but at the time I didn't realize how much they were really wanting that information. I just kind of downplayed it in a way it helped me not have to process a lot of that grief, but I realized that it wasn't helping me to just stuff these emotions down and not think of them. I really needed to talk about them and my two boys, I'm so thankful for it, my wife as well. I mean, they helped me realize that that is what they could do for me in those moments was just to listen. It's okay to listen and the other thing honestly, it's okay to cry and as an adult, as a news reporter during that time and as a former first responder who worked in law enforcement for four years, I cried my eyes out that week, I don't know how many times and I'm a grown

7:21adult, you know, I was near 50 years old, wouldn't happen. And it's okay. And it's important that we convey to our kids that it's okay to express their emotions about these things and ask questions. It really is because I mean, they've had different experiences, you know, with seeing visuals from that day or, you know, seeing news coverage or different things that were and they've heard about that and they knew, my children knew that that was a time that, you know, I lost my brother or they lost their uncle, but they weren't old enough at the time to have that connection with my brother. So they recognize that their connection to that event was much different than a lot of other people and, you know, they were left confused. I'm grateful with how they had really helped me, I guess, in a way just come out of a shell and feel all right about speaking of those things. It's interesting, you'll have different moments throughout the day or throughout a week that will come up and you're like, oh my gosh, it's just a memory that you have of somebody and I got a box in a closet in this room that is filled with items from that time period,

8:26from like that month. It's filled with postcards and pictures and newspaper clippings and just different things and I've only opened that box up once in 25 years and I didn't open it up for a long time because I just knew that it was going to be a big wave of grief hitting me and I couldn't even bring myself to open it. And so when I did, yeah, I mean, it was painful but more importantly, I think when you experienced that grief, it helps you understand how much you love somebody and I went through but I also just realized how much love was in that box from people who have written me postcards and notes and little crayon drawings from little kids at church and all this type of stuff and it really helped me appreciate how there were a lot of people there for me.

9:27I just didn't recognize it at the time. Well, Jim, on behalf of my wife, Kathy, who you know where he was. I love you. Now our kids, our kids, Alexander and Patrick, we send our love to you and Connie and Zachary and Connor Michael and all these years of joy we've been friends together. God bless you guys and thank you for sharing your story and on kid news condos. Thank you so much, Mark. I love you. God bless. Love you too. We will have more kid news, Convos coverage on the 9-11 anniversary after this breaks day with us. A friendly reminder that kid news is a nonprofit that survives and thrives on the generosity of our audience. Every penny supports the production of our regular kid-friendly news podcast five days a week. Plus these kid news Convos episodes featuring conversations on a single topic of interest to kids. Please consider making a donation on our website, kidnews.org. Welcome back to everyone to a kid news convo.

10:29I'm Mark Curtis, your host and we are continuing our discussion about the September 11th attacks as we commemorate the 25th anniversary of that sad day many years ago, September 11th of 2001. A lot of families are grappling with this. How do they teach their kids? How do they have discussions about it? I want to introduce the Domingos family. They live down here in South Florida where I do and you guys have had a lot of events and experience with dealing with 9-11. First of all, I want to introduce the dad Alex Domingos and the mom Jessica Domingos. What do you hope this provides? The 25th anniversary in terms of being able to teach your kids about the importance of that day and have the discussion? Yeah, well, thanks Mark. I think it's for all of us that lived through that moment. It's important that we remember, never forget, understand how it kind of changed our world in many ways and also the sacrifice of so many people not only on that day but after. So I think it's important in the days that we live today that it's a lesson in the kids and all about how important it was for us and everyone else around us.

11:32Jessica, I would imagine it's equally difficult because these are two children that weren't alive. Like the three adults here are the real more and we remember it very well. So what do you think about the importance of keeping the member alive by teaching your children and sharing the experience? Yeah, I think it's very important. I think it's good to teach them the resilience of the human spirit. I remember watching the events unfold and just how heroic and how everyone really just tried to lift each other up and sacrifice their own life for others and it was pretty amazing in such a devastating time how we all came together as a country, especially as a city in New York to help one another. Yeah, you mentioned helping one another. I want to promote an organization that's done a lot, the tunnels to tower foundation. You can find out more information at t, the number two, the letter t dot org t to t dot org because you have some of you anyway were involved in an event where they took one of the steel beams from the twin towers and they took it all the way around the country. They went from New York all the way out to San Francisco, Seattle Los Angeles and then

12:35loop back and went to a Miami Marlins game and Alex, you and Andrew got to see that steel beam and learn a lot more. What was that experience like? Incredibly impressive. They bring it in in a big truck and they settle the truck in and then they open up almost like this chamber that it's an inside of the truck that opens up like wings and what you see is a just a raw steel beam about 30 feet long. There's even a Pepsi can embedded into the beam that you can only imagine and fell from the building belong to someone and you really get an impression of it's a piece of history from such a large place that has such significance. Andrew, what was it like seeing that big steel beam? It was very amazing and the first thing I thought when I just looked at it was how memorable it is and it was really cool. And like my dad said, how they presented it was amazing.

13:35Well, I appreciate your thoughts and this is I'm going to interject something here because kid news is all about parents and kids listening to the news together. Kids and their teachers listening to the news together, having a discussion and sometimes it can be a little scarier frightening. And so we encourage kids. Andrew and Sam talk to your parents, talk to your teacher, talk to your preacher. It's important to have a conversation about adults about these things. Just like I want to ask you about the weekend trip to New York City, you guys not only took any Yankees game. I got you guys are big baseball fans, but you went to the 9-11 museum. What are your lasting impressions from that visit to that museum? Wow, it was my first time there along with all of our first times and it was very impressive the way that it is set up in such a way that the kids mentioned that they really appreciated the sequence of how they present every step of the way of how everything happened from the beginning to the end. It was just very informative and it prompted so many additional questions for the kids to

14:39ask us. It was very emotional at times, especially hearing the story of Flight 93 where they have audio of the actual passengers and it was almost like reliving that time. So it was very impactful. Sam, talk to me about you and your friends. Do you guys talk about this or the discussion starting or the teachers talking about it yet? We know 25th anniversary is a big deal and I just want to know how we're all the discussions are taking place. So yeah, a kind of love and discussion usually just comes up in my social studies class on 9-11 but my friends and I don't really talk about it like in regular conversation, but I really think it should be brought up more often when our teachers too because it's such an important part of our history that we really need to understand that that day was really important. One of my takeaways is that nowadays you pass firefighters and police officers and law enforcement and you stop and say thank you for your service. It happens to military personnel too.

15:41I have a daughter who's a captain of the army and it's so heartwarming that when I walk down the street with her in uniform and people stop and say thank you for your service, that kind of stuff never happened prior to 9-11. That really changed this country in terms of developing respect for those who protect us and I'd like Alex, see you do it, and it drives that Jessica as well. Well, we can't kind of bearing a little bit of a lead here but my dad and the kids grand dad is a retired police officer and was a police officer with a city of Miami for 25 years, 26 years. So you know, you can imagine the impact of that day. It has a different resonance when you have someone who goes out there, keeps people safe and sacrifices, you know, is their safety sometimes. So I can relate to folks being appreciative of those that serve our communities and first responders and law enforcement and fire departments because this is like a family connection, right? And those days and those days after has always been impactful because of that connection. Yeah, Jessica mentioned the word emotional.

16:41In my experience, I went to ground zero a few years later. It was still just a big hole in the ground and they had all the names of the victims posted there and I saw a dear friend of mine, Jim Taylor, who we heard from the first segment today. He talked about losing his brother that day, but it was so emotional and then I remember going back a few years later after the freedom tower had been built and was this giant tower of beaming light into the sky, which just shows the toughness of this country and the heart, the large heart of this country that we're able to build back and that was my takeaway. But you're right, it's very emotional. Yeah, it was and I also went and I saw ground zero fairly, you know, probably within the year after and it was still a very devastating area and I do remember also seeing the names and seeing the flyers still out and it was kind of just really hard to wrap your head around. But this had happened in our country, but I agree with you, you know, shortly after you, you really do see how resilient we are and how we came together to rebuild. So there's definitely a lot of learning from that.

17:44I remember at the time I was anchoring the morning news in San Francisco, it was 60 o'clock in the morning and this happened live during our entire morning newscast. And we were shocked and then later we found out flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville was actually bound for San Francisco. And I got to know many, many of those families and if not for the bravery of those men and women on that plane who took it down from the hijackers, it would be a whole different story. So we want to remember and honor them today as well. I want to thank the Dominguez family. You guys are wonderful to share your stories for joining us here on Kid News Convos. Have a great experience this week talking about it with each other and in its school of elsewhere and let's all learn from what happened. Thank you, Mom. Thank you for joining us, everyone on Kid News Convos. I'm Arcourtus. We'll see you next time.