When Ryan Manion stands before thousands of midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy this September, she will see something that would have been almost unimaginable when her brother Travis attended the academy.
Manion saw that reality clearly at the academy's 9/11 Heroes Run last year. Looking across a crowd filled with midshipmen, she estimated that 95% of the people standing in front of her had not yet been born when terrorists attacked the United States.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, the phrase "Never Forget" is confronting an inevitable generational transition.
An increasing number of Americans being asked to remember the attacks, including the young men and women now preparing to lead the nation's military, have no personal memory of them.
For Manion, CEO of the Travis Manion Foundation and sister of a Marine officer killed in Iraq, that doesn't make remembering Sept. 11 less important. It makes the responsibility greater.
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