IDAHO — Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, two men who experienced that day from opposite sides of the country are now connected in Idaho by the stories they carry and a shared commitment to preserving its memory.
For Chip Schultz, the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, began with a phone call at his Southern California home.
“A good friend of mine – his wife called and said, ‘You might want to turn on the news,’” Schultz recalled. “So I left the bed upstairs and ran downstairs.”
His three young daughters were asleep, and his wife was seven months pregnant with their son. Knowing his children were too young to fully understand what they were witnessing, Schultz searched for something that could one day help him explain it.
“I wanted to just buy an American flag, just a symbol, so that I could tell them about 9/11,” Schultz said. “And maybe, not more importantly, but maybe I wanted to tell them about September 12th.”
For Schultz, Sept. 12 represents the unity that followed the attacks.
“There was minimal left and right politics – fewer Republicans and Democrats,” he said. “Even in California, we were all New Yorkers, rallying behind New York, Pennsylvania and D.C.”
WATCH | Two Idaho men share their deeply personal connections to Sept. 11 and how they are keeping its stories alive 25 years later—
Across the country, Victor Miller was watching the attacks unfold from his office in New York City.
“I went room to room, and I said, ‘There’s a terrorist attack. A second plane’s hit. I think we should all get out,’” Miller said.
With the train system shut down, Miller began making his way out of Manhattan. Worried that bridges could become additional targets, he ran across the 59th Street Bridge and eventually caught a ferry home to Connecticut.
That night, he returned to his local train station.
“There were about four or five cars in the parking lot that were never picked up,” Miller said. “And those are the people that were in the towers and never came home.”
Miller lost friends, members of his community and two clients in the attacks. One had just returned from her honeymoon. Another had recently returned from maternity leave.
Twenty-five years later, Miller said those memories remain raw. But he also remembers what Schultz witnessed from thousands of miles away: a country coming together.
“It just showed the power of a united country,” Miller said, adding that the response demonstrated how “servant-hearted” Americans could be.
That was the Sept. 12 Schultz wanted his children to understand. The flag he bought after the attacks soon became more than a way to tell them about it.
Schultz first took the flag to the top of Half Dome on the first anniversary of the attacks. He later carried it through the San Diego Marathon and to the summit of Mount Whitney.
Over time, he began placing it in the hands of people whose experiences gave it new meaning, including veterans, service members and Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein.
“She grabbed my flag, the fabric of the flag, and she said, ‘This flag is the greatest symbol of freedom in the world,’” Schultz recalled. “She was tearing – tears rolling down her cheek. And she took my flag, and she took the fabric and wiped her tears away.”
The son who had not yet been born when Schultz purchased the flag grew up with its story. Years later, he carried it onto the football field for his high school senior night before going on to join the Navy.
Schultz said his son told him, “I want to serve my country at the highest level possible.”
As Sept. 11 shifts from a lived experience to a historical event for a new generation, Schultz and Miller are working to keep its memory alive.
One carries a flag that has gathered stories for 25 years. The other carries the memories of people who never made it home. Together, their experiences show how the impact of Sept. 11 continues to reach far beyond the places where the attacks occurred.
For both men, remembering Sept. 11 means more than looking back at the tragedy. It means passing forward stories of service, sacrifice, and unity so that “never forget” remains a promise for generations to come.
