I started writing this song 5 years ago.

In August 2021, thirteen U.S. service members lost their lives in the final days of the 20-year war in Afghanistan. Looking at their names and ages, all I could think was: most of them weren’t even born when this war started.

It took me right back to 3rd grade, sitting in our Tuesday morning typing class. Our teacher was supposed to walk in at 9:00 AM, but just 14 minutes earlier, American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

When she finally walked through the door, mascara running down her face, she wheeled over the classroom TV and turned it on.

Most of us had never heard of the World Trade Center. The Pentagon was just a shape in our math books. We had no idea that morning would become a timestamp on our lives.

There was before 9/11... and then there was after.

I wrote this song for the men and women who died that day—the firefighters, police officers, and everyday heroes who ran toward the smoke and never came home.

It’s for the more than 7,000 service members who gave their lives in the years that followed—and for their families who wonder if anyone still remembers their sacrifice.

And lastly, I wrote it for the kids like me. The last generation of Americans who remember that morning not as a chapter in a history book, but as "The Day They Let Us Watch TV at School."