25 years after 9/11: Victim family members share experiences, strength and hope

Kevin James Murphy was killed on the 100th floor while working for Marsh & McLennan, a professional services firm. From Bayshore, Long Island, and one of five children, he had just turned 40 on Sept. 1. 

His widow, Beth Murphy, was left to raise their two children, Connor, 7, and Caitlyn, 4, alone. This is after she’d survived cancer and would face many health challenges. 

“Just days before 9/11, Kevin stood beside my hospital bed and begged me to live because we feared my stage-three melanoma had returned. I went on to survive three cancers, including lung cancer connected to Ground Zero exposure,” she told The Center Square.

Throughout the years, she’s “served as an advocate for 9/11 victims, other victims of terrorism, and their families,” successfully helping advance legislation supporting those affected by terrorism, “ensuring that their needs, sacrifices, and stories are not forgotten,” she said.

Two days before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, she suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke. 

“Doctors said I would most likely never walk again, but I promised Kevin I would. Today, I walk miles and continue regaining movement in my affected hand and arm,” she said. She also plans to walk unaided at the wedding of her daughter, who is now 29, she said.

As chief ambassador at Neuroanimation, Beth Murphy is also helping others living with neurological injuries, “drawing on my own experience to offer encouragement, advocacy and hope.” The organization combines neuroscience, immersive experiences and precision programs to help patients improve “cognition and everyday function.”

She’s continuing to share “Kevin’s life and her journey from unimaginable loss to purpose, service, and hope.” She told The Center Square, “I have learned, ‘If there is a WHY there is a WAY for hope, health and survival throughout the most tragic times of one's life.”

Suzann Cayne was 7 when her father, Jason David Cayne, from Manalapan, NJ, was killed while working on the 104th floor for Cantor Fitzgerald. He would have turned 33 on Nov. 11 that year. His widow and teenage sweetheart, Gina, was left to raise three children on her own, Suzann, 7, Marissa, 4, and Raquel, 22 months.

“Twenty-five years later, I still think about how one ordinary morning divided our lives into a before and an after,” Suzann Cayne told The Center Square. “At seven years old, I understood that my dad wasn't coming home. But I couldn't possibly understand everything that meant.”

She says she “understands it differently now,” now that she’s a mother. She’s older than her mother Gina was at 30 when she became a widow.

The hardest part is explaining to her children “that their grandfather was murdered by people who had never met him,” Suzann Cayne said, asking, “How do you explain hatred that enormous to someone who hasn't learned to hate yet?” 

“I have stared that hatred right in the face,” she continued. Years after 9/11, “I stood in a courtroom at Guantánamo Bay as a Jewish woman, an American, and the daughter of a man taken by terrorism,” she said. “I stood there knowing I represented everything that hatred tried to destroy…and I was still standing. But beneath all of that, I was still the little girl whose father never came home.”

Families of those killed on 9/11 are demanding justice, accountability and transparency as two 9/11 cases are ongoing – a criminal trial against 9/11 conspirators still being held at GITMO and a civil trial against the Saudi government by 9/11 victims’ families.

Since 1979, there have been nearly 70,000 Islamic terrorist attacks committed worldwide, The Center Square reported. Last year was the third most violent year on record for American Jews, with antisemitic attacks on the rise since the Oct. 7, 2023.

Suzann Cayne says she is teaching her children to remember what happened “without learning to hate. I can't give my children their grandfather. But I can give them his story. I can say his name. And I can teach them that remembering what happened to our family never requires hating someone else's.” 

The 9/11 families also are encouraging Americans to remember the 2,977 lives taken on Sept. 11.