From 9/11 to Charlie Kirk’s murder, America faces evil — and defeats it with its goodness

<p>Twenty-four years ago Thursday, evil took 2,977 innocent lives in the deadliest terror attack ever carried out on American soil.</p><p>Among those murdered were my brother Gary, my best friend Doug, and 656 other colleagues and friends of mine from Cantor Fitzgerald.</p><p>I’m only alive today because that fateful Tuesday was my oldest son’s first day of kindergarten.</p><p>That morning, instead of going to our offices in the 101st through 105th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, I joined my wife in taking our son to school.</p><p>At some point, my phone started ringing but disconnected each time I’d answer.</p><p>I only later learned that it was my brother Gary trying to call from the building to say goodbye.</p><p>Once I heard that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, I raced downtown.</p><p>I arrived at the base of the building and started grabbing people as they came out the doors, hoping that some of my people were able to escape. None did. &nbsp;</p><p>If you think about all the people you work with, I guarantee you don’t appreciate how important they actually are to you.</p><p>We all underestimate how central our colleagues are in our lives. Most people spend more time with their co-workers than they do with their families.</p><div class=”inline-module inline-module–more inline-module–explore-more inline-module–more–thirds” data-source-unit=”Explore More – Tag”><p>People don’t often articulate the love they feel for their colleagues, or even think it’s accurate to call it love. But it is.</p><p>When they’re ripped from you in an instant, your heart collapses.</p><p>Losing my colleagues — my partners, my friends — showed me the depths of that love.</p><p>I cried every single day until Oct. 21, 2004.</p><p>When I went to bed that night, I remember telling my wife it was the first day I hadn’t cried.</p><p>The grief never completely leaves.</p><p>There’s too much to process. Too much death and pain to fully comprehend at once.</p><p>So much so that when someone would mention the name of a co-worker who died that day, it was like they were killed then and there.</p><p>That pain would flood back all over again because I hadn’t fully processed each of the hundreds of deaths.</p><p>Even now, I still get emotional when I speak about 9/11 because it is a wound that never fully heals.</p><p>Today, after rebuilding Cantor Fitzgerald from the ground up, I serve as our nation’s 41st secretary of Commerce.<br>&nbsp;</p></div>