Join us this September 11th between Two Lights that are never ending to remember our heroes from 9-11, our loved ones lost, and America's never ending resilience in the fight for freedom and liberty for all. 🇺🇸❤️👊@ABC @ABC @hulu @NatGeo @DisneyPlus @Sept11Memorial pic.twitter.com/i0yiY4Fi7I
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) September 4, 2026
The 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people will come a week from today. Have we forgotten its lessons? Have we overlooked its heroes and the people left behind?
For the next week, we have the opportunity to remember and act.
To commemorate those lost in the attacks and the heroes who tried to save them, John Ondrasik will return to Ground Zero for a live broadcast on ABC and its streaming partners, Hulu and Disney+, sponsored by the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. John will join country-music star Lainey Wilson on stage for the “9/11 Tribute in Light: Live from Lower Manhattan” at 8:00 PM EDT. The museum announced the event on Wednesday:
Also announced today: Lainey Wilson and John Ondrasik of Five For Fighting will perform during Disney Entertainment Television multiplatform live special programming premiering Friday, September 11, including “9/11 Tribute in Light: Live from Lower Manhattan” at 8:00 p.m. EDT across ABC, Disney+, Hulu, National Geographic, ABC Owned Television Stations livestreams and ABC News Live, in partnership with the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and “Prime with Linsey Davis” at 7:00 p.m. EDT on WABC-TV New York, ABC News Live, Disney+, Hulu and ABC Owned Television Stations livestreams. This special was created in partnership with Alex Coletti Productions, Executive Producer Patrick Menton, and Production Designer LeRoy Bennett.
The performances will be part of Tribute in Light, the annual commemorative public art installation that has illuminated the New York City skyline every September 11 since 2002, and this year will mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. During Tribute in Light, twin beams reach up to four miles into the sky, echoing the shape and orientation of the Twin Towers, and are visible within a 60-mile radius of Lower Manhattan.
This year, for the first time, the iconic installation will be broadcast live to audiences nationwide as part of the 25th anniversary commemoration of September 11. “9/11 Tribute in Light: Live from Lower Manhattan” will be hosted live from New York City by “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir, “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts, and anchor Diane Sawyer, and the “Prime” pre-show will be anchored by “World News Tonight” Sunday and “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis and WABC-TV anchors Sade Baderinwa and Mike Marza. In a Tribute in Light first, Ondrasik and Wilson will perform live from the base of the iconic beams, bringing viewers across the country together for a shared moment of remembrance.
John will also perform at the official FDNY event commemorating the attacks on September 9th. That event will take place on Staten Island and will have a special focus on the 343 firefighters who lost their lives that day, and more than 400 who have died since then from illnesses related to the aftermath of the attacks. That event won't be broadcast, but Gary Sinise will also be on hand to podcast the commemoration.
Earlier today, I spoke with John about his long association with 9/11-related efforts to honor the heroes and remember the victims. He's also getting ready for his Five for Fighting tour with his string quartet, but we mainly focused on the ABC event. John and I agreed that ABC's effort is remarkable and provides some hope that the American media may approach this milestone with the gravitas necessary:
I think most of the mainstream media will do the right thing. I'm already seeing posts, I'm seeing remembrance; you're seeing stories, heroes, people I'd never heard of before just doing heroic things. And I think we'll see more and more of that. And maybe for a short window, we'll kind of get back to that America that we saw right after 9-11, where there was no red or blue but red, white, and blue, and people put aside their politics. I think that's a hope I have for this.
His signature song Superman (It's Not Easy) has also become part of the 9/11 remembrance legacy. Very quickly after the attacks, its message about the fragility of heroes became inextricably linked to the awful losses of first responders, not to mention the ordinary people who were heroes to their own families, and as John mentions, the "first responders" on Flight 93. I asked John how that transpired, and he tells me that he'd been stuck in the UK after the attacks, and when he got back, the links began to appear:
I remember landing in O'Hare and kind of getting off the plane and kissing the tarmac. And a few folks had said that some organizations had been using Superman to kind of recognize the heroes. And New York Radio was playing the song. But I really had no sense till I got back that it had kind of become one of those songs. And then very quickly, a friend of mine named Rick Krim, who ran VH1, said, Hey, Paul McCartney's doing this concert for New York. And would you want to play Superman? And of course, I'm like, okay.
You know, here's this young guy who just got used to hearing a song on his radio, on the radio, and now here at Madison Square Garden with all my living icons. But so I think, again, playing Superman at the concert for New York really was the moment that it became that song, you know, with the firefighters on the stage. And again, there were a few other songs around that time, but you know, again, I think it really kind of flipped a switch.
Indeed it did, and ever since, John has worked tirelessly to keep the flame alive. John has plenty more to say in our interview below, so be sure to watch it all, and plan to tune in next Friday at 8 PM ET on ABC and/or its streaming partners for the remembrance.
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