After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, federal law enforcement agent Jared Murphey spent months searching through rubble of the World Trade Center's North Tower.
Murphey found an exit sign from the 35th floor stairwell of the North Tower.
On Friday morning, Sept. 11, 2026, that sign was displayed at the center of a podium on the Detroit riverfront where Murphey and other federal law enforcement officers honored the lives of the nearly 3,000 fallen and the first responders who took the call 25 years ago. Murphey is currently the special agent in charge of the Homeland Security Investigations Detroit office.
He was one of many on Friday who shared their 9/11 memories at Detroit events honoring those who died, who were impacted, and who were first
responders after the terrorist attacks.
In a ceremony hosted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, federal agents pinned ribbons to a wreath to float down the Detroit River, and helicopters flew overhead as a tribute. In an afternoon ceremony at Campus Martius, the honor guards for the Detroit police and fire departments marched in a presentation of colors.
Murphey told the Detroit Free Press the sign he displays in his office reminds him that many people who passed it as they went down the stairs on 9/11 survived, and that he and other law enforcement authorities work to prevent terrorism.
“For me and for many of my brothers and sisters here, this was a seminal part of our profession," he said. "It was what caused us to and inspired us to go to work."
Speakers at the separate DHS and city events included Republican gubernatorial nominee U.S. Rep. John James and Jerome Gorgon, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, to Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield and WXYZ Anchor Glenda Lewis and her mom Diana Lewis, a former news anchor.
All Americans have 'a role to play'
Citing a number of attacks over the last 25 years, including the attack on a West Bloomfield synagogue in March, Gorgon said, "Terrorism is not only in our past, it is in the present, and it is at home."
“To protect the living, we must remember these attacks," Gorgon said. "We must study the methods of our enemies. Law enforcement, for our part, we’ll continue to investigate, we’ll hold the guilty responsible, but all Americans ... have a role to play in protecting our nation."
Murphey said the “tremendous sense of unity” in the U.S. in the weeks and months after 9/11 has since dissipated. He recalled leaving a shift at Ground Zero one day to a woman telling him, “God bless you, sir.”
“It didn’t occur to me that she was talking to me and it was because I was wearing a uniform and it was covered in soot and debris. "You don’t hear that that often anymore," Murphey said.
'Did not break us'
In the days after the attack, over a dozen Detroit firefighters left their families at home, took vacation time, got their shifts covered and made their way to Ground Zero to stand alongside thousands of other first responders who traveled across the country to help, Detroit Executive Fire Commissioner Charles Simms said at an event hosted by the city at Campus Martius.
“When something terrible happens, firefighters don’t ask, is it our city? Is it our state? Is it our problem? We just go, we stand together, we work together, and we take care of people we’ve never met," he said.
In a video sharing 9/11 stories, Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison said he was in the drive-through at Wendy’s listening to the Tom Joyner radio show when he learned the first World Trade Center tower was hit. Then the second tower was struck.
"At that moment, everything changed," he said.
Sheffield said, "In the face of unimaginable devastation, Americans helped strangers without first asking who they were, where they came from or what they believed."
“We held on to one another. We leaned on one another. And we carried one another forward," she said. "A day that was intended to break America did not break us."
Contact Natalie Davies at ndavies@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit ceremonies remember 9/11 victims, first responders
