15 years after 9/11

The customer needed a radiator for a minivan, and the job gave Terry Butler an excuse to get away from the shop’s TV, which was blaring live news about planes smashing into the World Trade Center and leaving the Pentagon smoldering.

Five years and two designs later, Huntington Beach will finally debut its Sept. 11 memorial on Sunday.

It seemed almost unfathomable before Sept. 11, 2001, that terrorists could commandeer fuel-bloated jets to crash into buildings, incinerating two towers of steel and concrete in New York and ripping into the Pentagon.

The children of 9/11 are growing up.

Making the decision to help 15 years ago might end Garrett Goodwin’s life early.

After the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, O’Hara’s Restaurant and Pub filled up quickly with the commodity traders who flooded in from the doomed building, taking refuge in the neighborhood tavern.

Fifteen years ago, in the first fearful days after Sept. 11, 2001, the verdict was almost universal: “This changes everything.”