By Shawn Kennedy, editor-in-chief

One can find many commemorative events for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 being held in those places (New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania) where planes hit, and in other cities as well. Some are appropriate and done well and others are (at least to me) over-the-top and tactless—like one New York City radio station playing tapes of the confusion and chaos from first responder radio transmissions; families and friends of victims don’t need to hear that and think of what their loved ones were going through in their final moments.

How we saw it then. AJN’s offices are located in New York City. In 2001, we could see the burning World Trade Center from our windows and we wrote about about our experiences and thoughts. We knew nurses would be in the forefront of responding to help, so we reached out to nurses here in New York and in the Washington, DC, area in order to report on what nurses there were doing. And we also carried a Viewpoint essay, in which one of our Muslim colleagues reported on the backlash that she was experiencing and made a plea for tolerance.

Our current coverage. In planning this September issue, we wanted to acknowledge the events in some way—hence our cover (thumbnail illustraton above) by artist and nurse Charlie Kaiman, who witnessed the events (see also his artwork from 2001 conveying that […]