Ahead of 9/11 25th anniversary, our 3 journalists drive across the country in search of unity

In the days and weeks and months following Sept. 11, 2001, “never” was a popular word in America.

Everybody, it seemed, would “never forget.” And when we weren’t declaring our eternal remembrance, a lot of us insisted that the country would “never again” be on the wrong side of terror.

At least one person felt something even more basic, finger painting the words “never, never, never,” and nothing else, in the white powder that dusted Manhattan in the days after the towers came down. Was the writer talking about memory or terror or what? Unclear. But the “never” part of that message felt pretty complete.

I know because I saw it.

On Sept. 20, 2001, I was in Manhattan with former Orange County Register photographer Bruce Strong, to start the reporting for a story called “Through the Heart.” For the rest of the month, we drove from New York to Southern California, talking with people in small towns and other places about people they lost on 9/11 and their lives in the new, post-attack America.

It was an emotional and exciting and grueling project. I also thought it was a one-off, never to be repeated.

Never turned out to be shorter than I imagined.

Southern California News Group photographer Jeff Gritchen, reporter Sierra van der Brug and I are embarking on a new version of that Sept. 11 assignment.

From Thursday, Sept. 3, through Friday, Sept. 11, our plan is to drive from Southern California to New York, to visit a handful of the hundreds of 9/11 memorials that now dot the country, talking with anybody who’ll talk back. We started at the 9/11 mural at the North Net Training Center near Angel Stadium and set out for what’s left of the memorial at the New York-New York Hotel in Las Vegas, which is now held by the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

We’ll offer daily updates on our websites, our social media feeds and in the newspaper, and deliver a bigger story for Sunday, Sept. 13, sharing what we hear and see and learn.

That’s about 3,200 miles of driving, reporting, talking and listening.

But about what?

Fernando Negrete, a retired firefighter from Anaheim, has an idea about that.

Negrete, who grew up near Whittier before spending decades as a first responder in Santa Ana and Anaheim, first visited New York in November 2001. He was leading a contingent of 14 Orange County firefighters who had raised money in Southern California to help the families of fallen firefighters in New York and New Jersey.

For a brief time during that first trip, Negrete and his crew were like flame-resistant Santas, going to firehouses and writing checks for kids and widows and such.

It wasn’t forever money – $88,000 in total, spread out over several firehouses – but Negrete described it as some of the easiest fundraising anybody has ever done. People in Orange County, he said, “really, really wanted” to help those firefighters, and strangers contributed to every fundraiser the firefighters held.

Negrete has returned so often, and continued to help with such relentless kindness, that he’s been named an honorary member of the Fire Department of New York. Every year, he marches with locals in remembrances of the fallen.

“We’re all pretty together on that,” he said this week.

And that sense of togetherness, he added, is what we should write about on this second version of Through the Heart.

“September the 12th is the day that means so much,” Negrete said.

“The attacks of the 11th were one thing. But right after it happened, for a little bit, we really came together as a country. That’s something to think about.”

It’s true.

Twenty-five years ago, the American flag was a symbol for everybody. That, of course, has changed. At the time, Americans of all political stripes also backed the president specifically and the federal government in general, according to polling from the period. That, too, has changed.

Fear. Tolerance. Sadness. In the weeks and months after the attacks, Americans had strong feelings about a boatload of things. Some were good, some were horrible; but, according to polling and anecdotal evidence, we seemed to be feeling them together, as a country.

That’s all been vaporized.

The story we’re chasing this time won’t try to explain why. We have no idea and, frankly, neither do the people who will argue with any version presented to them. It’s just a fact, true as sunrise, that to the extent that the terrorists of 9/11 wanted to divide America, they succeeded.

For now.

See, that’s what is so cool about “never.”

When everybody used that word, a quarter-century ago, there was an unspoken pronoun.

Who would never forget?

We would not. All of us.

So that’s the assignment. To ask regular people if that feeling could, somehow – hopefully without another terror attack – come back.

Can America find a new sense of unity?

“I think that there is some sort of, like, deep, deep embedded something in us, as a country, that could come back together,” Negrete said.

“I think the term ‘never’ is often misused,” he added. “But in this context, ‘never forget’ isn’t just about the attacks. It’s about each other.”