Next generation who never met loved ones killed in 9/11 pledges to Never forget

They are keeping a light shining on our darkest day.A new generation who were not yet born on Sept.11, 2001, solemnly helped read out the names of nearly 3,000 fallen loved ones at Ground Zero Friday – keeping their memories alive 25 years after the terror attacks.Young speaker after speaker heartbreakingly spoke about their lost relatives, mourning the unrealized moments ripped away as terrorists slammed jets into the World Trade Center on a bright blue morning ultimately clouded by plumes of gray ash.“Grandma, I never got to meet you, but you’ve been with me my entire life,” said the granddaughter of Barbara Walsh – an administrative assistant at Marsh & McLennan, whose offices were in the North Tower hit by Flight 11.The young woman told the crowd of families, survivors, first responders and dignitaries that while she could only visit the name etched on the memorial’s reflecting pool, she still carries the pain and loss of that day through her loved ones.“I’m just begging to scratch the surface of understanding the magnitude of what it must have felt like,” the girl said about the tragedy.“I remember asking my uncle if people my age would ever forget.

He said it was our job to make sure they never did,” she said.“To my family and everyone born after 9/11 who grew up carrying a loss that they never personally experienced, but still feel the sinking pain in their stomach at the mention of 9/11, I promise you, we promise we will remember.”The multitudes of New Yorkers and Americans like Walsh’s granddaughter are only growing with each passing year.The 9/11 Memorial & Museum estimates that a third of Americans alive today were not yet born as the Sept.11 attacks held the world transfixed in horror.One of them – Manuel Damota – was just a four-month-old embryo in his mother’s womb when his namesake father perished at the World Trade Center.Damota, now 24, described the past quarter-century of loss as an “empty chair, empty...