25 years ago today, America learned how quickly an ordinary morning can become a dividing line between before and after.
Every September 11, we say that we will never forget. We remember names. We remember faces. We remember stories. Because the people we lost were not statistics.
Today, I want you to know the name Thomas Tonkin.
Thomas was the man who lost his life in the fire at Troy Villa last week.
But that sentence tells you almost nothing about who he was.
Thomas was an artist. He supported himself through his art his entire life. He was a friend to many.
Over the course of his career, his artwork and designs became connected to National Parks and historic sites across America. For the last 15 years, Thomas worked on projects for more than 75 of our National Parks and Monuments.
And, incredibly, among the work he was doing was work connected to the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania.
On this day, of all days, that is difficult to put into words.
25 years ago, the passengers and crew of Flight 93 became part of our national memory. Thomas later spent part of his life and his talent helping tell the stories of places like that.
Now Thomas himself is someone who deserves to be remembered.
He cannot simply become “the man who died in the Troy Villa fire.” And there should never be another person there that suffers the same fate because the city, state, and company refuse to put in the same fire hydrants that the rest of us take for granted.
There are serious questions that must be answered about what happened that night, including questions surrounding fire hydrants at Troy Villa and whether firefighters had the water supply they should have had when every second mattered.
I am not going to prejudge an investigation.
But I am also not going to accept Thomas becoming another forgotten name in a report.
And I will not accept the idea that because many of the people living in Troy Villa have less money than their neighbors, their safety somehow deserves less scrutiny, less urgency or less accountability.
Their lives matter every bit as much as anyone else’s.
Thomas’s life mattered.
That is what “Never Forget” should mean.
It means remembering the human being behind the casualty number. It means refusing to look away when something goes terribly wrong.
And it means caring enough about one another to demand answers when the systems intended to protect human life may not have worked as they should.
So today, I’m sharing some of Thomas Tonkin’s artwork.
Look at it.
Look at what this man created.
And remember his name.
Thomas Tonkin.
Artist.
Friend.
Creator.
A man whose work touched some of the places where America preserves its own history.
On September 11, we remember those we lost 25 years ago.
Today, here in Troy, I am also remembering a man our community just lost.
Thomas should still be here.
