9/11 Memorial Interpretive Guide Shares Memorable Moments

“Where were you on 9/11?” That question is often posed at the end of my guided 9/11 Memorial tours. From there, I launch into describing my memory of a then-13-year-old girl who sat at her window, watching plumes of thick black clouds drift up toward midtown Manhattan.

Now as an interpretive guide, some 14 years later, I provide visitors to the 9/11 Memorial with an understanding of the historical context of the attacks at the site where they transpired. But it is through the tours that I have become acutely aware of how 9/11 resonates with people differently.

Slowly the gravity of being on the site settles in. A beautiful day on the Memorial plaza juxtaposed by the tragedy that occurred nearly 14 years prior. I share the stories of the men, women and children whose names are inscribed on the bronze panels around the Memorial pools. It's through these remembrances that we learn about the lives these individuals lived.

I see my groups trying to reconcile how their own stories fit into the mosaic of a shared global experience; a form of catharsis. A family in Australia who woke up at night to the news of a catastrophic event on the other side of the world. A young woman whose high school prom date 10 years prior worked in one of the Twin Towers. The former New Yorkers who return to an unrecognizable landscape of lower Manhattan.

I watch visitors take in the names and the pools, and how their emotions shift. Sometimes we cry together. One afternoon in the middle of a tour, we all got emotional after seeing a white birthday rose stemming from the name of 11-year-old student, Bernard Brown. He would have turned 25 years old this summer.

Being able to share these moments and talk with people from all over who were affected by 9/11, makes being a guide all the more meaningful.

By Nicole Richardson, 9/11 Memorial Interpretive Guide 

Learn more about guided tours of the Memorial and Museum.