Episode 823 - When Memory Becomes History

0:00Help leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building and goal achieving. This is the Seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Felle Valido. Hello everyone and welcome to the Seven Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 823. Today is September 11th, 2026. 25 years ago today the world changed and there is something about saying 25 years that hits differently a quarter of a century. For millions of people listening today, September 11th is a memory. You remember where you were, you remember who called you, you remember turning on the television, you remember watching something unfold that your mind couldn't quite comprehend.

1:02In for an entire generation coming into our workplace today, September 11th isn't a memory at all. It's history. They weren't alive. They didn't see the smoke. They didn't watch the towers fall in real time. They didn't spend the rest of that day wondering what was going to happen next. They learned about September 11th the way many of us learned about Pearl Harbor through books, classrooms, documentaries, photographs and stories told by people who were there. That's what I want to talk about today. What happens when memory becomes history because I was there, not in New York, not at the Pentagon. I was sent to Shanksville, Pennsylvania as part of the Pittsburgh critical incident stress. The briefing team after United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field there. My role was to support the people working at the site and eventually to be there as families of the passengers and crew arrived.

2:03I've spoken about that experience before. I've talked about the silence. I've talked about the families. I've talked about the first responders. I've talked about the incredible courage of the 40 passengers and crew aboard Flight 93. Today, 25 years later, I keep thinking about something different. I keep thinking about time. 25 years is long enough for details to begin disappearing. It's long enough for children to become adults. It's long enough for young first responders from 2001 to become chiefs, commanders, retirees, grandparents and mentors. It's long enough for something that once stopped an entire nation to become another date on a calendar if we're not careful. That's where leadership enters this conversation. Leaders are keepers of important stories. Every organization has them.

3:04Every family has them. Every profession has them. Every country has them. Stories about moments when people were tested. Stories about people who stepped forward. Stories about terrible mistakes that can never be repeated. Stories about ordinary people who discovered something extraordinary inside themselves. If leaders stop telling those stories eventually, the lesson disappears with the people who lived it. I've had the honor of being interviewed by the National Park Service for the Flight 93 National Memorial Oral History Project. Think about what the words oral history actually mean. Someone asks you to tell the story while you still can, because eventually there will come a September 11th anniversary when none of us who experienced that day firsthand will be here to talk about it. That's difficult to think about. It's also exactly why the stories matter.

4:07And one of the stories we must continue telling is what happened to board Flight 93. Those passengers and crew members didn't wake up that morning expecting history to call their names. They had flights to catch people to see places to go. Plans for September 12th. And then everything changed. Information began reaching them about what was happening elsewhere in the country. They realized what was happening aboard that aircraft and people who never expected to be placed in that position had a decision to make. They acted. That's one of the most important leadership lessons from September 11th. You don't get to choose when your defining moment arrives. Leadership doesn't send you a calendar invitation. There isn't always time to prepare. There isn't always a policy to read. Sometimes the moment arrives, looks you directly in the eye and asks, what are you going to do? Most of our leadership decisions will never carry consequences remotely comparable to what

5:12those passengers faced. The principal still matters because character is built before the crisis. The decision you make when nobody is watching prepare you for the decisions you make when everybody is depending on you. That's why standards matter. That's why accountability matters. That's why integrity matters. That's why courage matters. You don't suddenly manufacture character because something terrible happened. You bring your character with you into the moment. 25 years later, that's one of the lessons I carry from Shanksville. I also remember the people working there, people doing jobs nobody could have prepared them to do. There was no leadership seminar for September 11th. There was no perfect playbook sitting on a shelf somewhere. People responded, people adapted, people took care of each other, people did what needed done. Then they came back the next day and did it again.

6:13Some leadership looks heroic from the outside. Some of it looks incredibly ordinary, showing up for your shift, doing the work, helping the person beside you, making the next decision, staying professional while processing something you will carry for the rest of your life. I saw that kind of leadership in Shanksville. In 25 years later, I still think about it. I also think about the responsibility. We have to the people who weren't alive in 2001. If you lead younger people today, don't assume they understand September 11th simply because they recognize the date. Tell them the stories. Tell them about the firefighters climbing stairwells. Thousands of people were coming down. Tell them about police officers, paramedics, dispatchers, military personnel, healthcare workers, the volunteers, construction workers, clergy members, counselors, and ordinary citizens

7:14who responded. Tell them about Flight 93. Tell them why there is a national memorial sitting in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Tell them what happened there. And please tell them the names and stories of the people. Not only the number, 40 passengers and crew. They were human beings with families, careers, plans, personalities. People who love them and lives waiting for them at their destinations. That's how we keep human history. Leadership has a responsibility to remember because remembering isn't living in the past. Everything allows the past to teach the future. I was a different person on September 10th, 2001. I think everyone who lived through September 11th was. I certainly didn't know when I woke up that morning that events unfolding hundreds of miles away would eventually bring me to a field in Shanksville and become part of my life story.

8:1725 years later, I still don't pretend to have some perfect explanation for what I saw or felt there. Some experiences don't need to be packaged into a neat leadership lesson. Some deserve respect. Some deserve silence. Some deserve to be remembered exactly because they were difficult. So today I'm not going to give you a leadership checklist. I'm not going to give you five ways to lead better tomorrow morning. I'm going to ask you to do something much simpler. Remember, if you lived through September 11th, tell someone younger what you remember. Tell them where you were. Tell them what you felt. Tell them what the days afterward were like. And then listen to their questions because someday our voices will become part of history too. The responsibility for remembering will belong to them. And leadership sometimes means handing something important to the next generation and saying,

9:18don't let this disappear. 25 years have passed. The field in Shanksville looks different today than it did when I arrived there in 2001. The world looks different. I look different. But there are things time should never erase. 40 passengers accrue above flight 93. Nearly 3000 lives lost on September 11th. Countless families changed forever. Extraordinary acts of service, sacrifice, duty, and courage. 25 years later, we remember them. 25 years from now, I hope someone else will too. Never forget. This has been the seven minute leadership podcast. And I thank you for listening. For more Paul Felle Valito podcasts, visit PaulFelleValito.com.