09/11/2026
September 11 is personal for me.
Not only because of what happened to our country that day, but because of what happened to me afterward.
I was in 11th grade. I had written something about 9/11 that people didn't understand. I wrote that as horrible as that day was, America had forgotten something about itself. We had started believing we were untouchable. Invincible. And sometimes it takes the unthinkable to remind people who they are, what they stand for, and how much they need one another.
Those words came with a price.
I was jumped at school and ended up in the hospital.
There was a moment on that ground when I couldn't see, covered in my own blood, when I thought about my 10-month-old daughter and wife.
I had kissed them goodbye that morning.
And I genuinely wondered if that had been the last time.
I don't share that for sympathy. Most people who know me have probably never heard the story.
I share it because of what I chose afterward.
I didn't learn to hate my country.
I learned to appreciate it.
Because somewhere there is a firefighter who doesn't know my name but would run into a burning building for me.
There is a police officer who doesn't know what I believe but would answer my family's call.
There is a first responder who wouldn't stop to ask whether I was Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, religious or not.
And there are men and women who have put on the uniform of this country, left their own children behind, and stood somewhere far from home so I could come home to mine.
They don't have to know me.
They don't have to agree with me.
They don't even have to like me.
They still show up.
That is what September 11 means to me.
Yes, remember the evil that happened.
Never minimize it. Never sanitize it. Never allow what those people experienced, what their families lost, or what thousands sacrificed afterward to be brushed under the rug.
But remember something else, too.
Remember who we became on September 12.
So today, I don't care who you voted for.
Go say hi to your neighbor.
Smile at somebody a little longer.
Shake a stranger's hand.
Call your family.
Be grateful that we live in a country where we are free to disagree—and then remember that the person across from you is still your neighbor.
Twenty-five years later, maybe the best way we can honor those we lost isn't simply by saying Never Forget.
Maybe it's by showing them that we haven't forgotten who we are.
To our troops, our first responders, and every person who has ever stepped forward for someone they didn't even know:
Thank you.
Thank you for my daughters.
Thank you for my wife.
Thank you for my life.
🇺🇸 Never Forget. 🇺🇸
— Chase
