The Best of Us: 25 Years Later, Reflecting on Windows of Hope

Jeff Robbins on Sep 8, 2026

For those who remember the way savagery shattered serenity on Sept. 11, 2001, the last 25 years haven't dimmed the memory of the evil that occurred that day. One remembers the photos of the missing, murdered plastered on Manhattan's buildings and street poles and The New York Times obituaries -- bunches each day -- of those pulverized in the wreckage. One remembers the footage of some in the Middle East honking cars, distributing sweets and firing guns into the air, celebrating the killing of Americans.

But you also remember the breathtaking heroism of the first responders, so many of whom raced to their deaths in order to try to save others from the collapsing Twin Towers. You remember the words "Let's roll!" uttered by Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93, exhorting his fellow passengers to rush the plane's cockpit to try to wrest control from the hijackers who, they had learned, had turned what was now an attack plane in the direction of Washington, D.C. -- a rush to the cockpit which they knew would guarantee their demise within minutes and did.

There was Great Britain's Band of the Coldstream Guards, departing sharply from tradition on Sept. 13 to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the Changing of the Guards ceremony at Buckingham Palace -- at the direction of Queen Elizabeth. Followed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's transatlantic flight a week later to sit in the Capitol gallery while former President George W. Bush addressed Congress, physically demonstrating our ally's solidarity with America after having stated immediately after the attack that his people stood "shoulder to shoulder" with us.

There were uncountable acts of kindness -- by individuals, by groups, by entire communities -- to fellow Americans, gestures aimed at doing something, anything, to try to lessen the grief of strangers.

A quarter century since al-Qaeda's slaughter of 3000 souls, with the deeds of similar slaughterers the daily fare of our news feeds, it's also an occasion to reflect by contrast on the best of us. Among those massacred were hundreds of restaurant and hospitality industry workers, including untold numbers of immigrants, many of whom were undocumented, who had come to America in hopes of creating futures for their families.

The dead included 79 employees and dozens of guests of Windows on the World, the iconic restaurant located on the 106th and 107th floors of the World Trade Center's North Tower. The co-owner of the restaurant, David Emil and Executive Chef Michael Lomonaco escaped death that morning purely by the grace of God. Emil dropped his young son off at school and decided not to proceed to a meeting scheduled at the restaurant. Lomonaco stopped on his way up to the restaurant to have his glasses adjusted by an optometrist on the ground level. "Everybody who was at (the restaurant) that day was killed," Emil recalls.

Emil, Lomonaco, chef Waldy Malouf, food industry consultant Darlene Dwyer and others immediately hurled themselves into a fundraising drive that would raise and distribute almost $25 million for the families of those kitchen assistants, dishwashers, food service workers and others working entry-level jobs -- to pay their families' rent, to buy food, to provide for family members' health care and their education. Locating the families and navigating the logistics of providing for them was no easy task and required a complicated administrative operation. Companies like The New York Times, Bloomberg and others ensured that all funds raised were used for the care of the families, rather than for administration. And under the leadership of Emil and his colleagues, restaurants, their clientele and other donors pitched in, enabling a rapidly formed Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund to help rebuild lives devastated on Sept. 11th.

"It was clear we had to do something for these families," says Emil simply, reluctant in the extreme to say much about what to him and his group seemed like basic humanity, the kind of thing we're all put here to try to do. It happens, however, that in a time when callousness and downright cruelty seem the rage in certain quarters and even on an anniversary that is mostly about an act of evil, remembering that there is another side to our story does provide a window of hope.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States Attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.