What did we learn from Sept. 11, 2001?

Twenty years later.

It still feels like today. This morning. Right now.

His was one of the thousands of lives lost 20 years ago, no more or less valuable than anyone else’s life. But he was a friend from high school and college and that made his death personal. It’s still personal.

Timothy Coughlin had made it to the very top, literally, the 103rd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Tim was a bond trader for Cantor-Fitzgerald and something of a Wall Street legend, as much for his heart, humor and humanity as for his professional success.

But the top was a terrible place to be 20 years ago. Evil arrived at 500 miles per hour. Tim never really stood a chance.

Undoubtedly his last thoughts were of his beautiful wife, Maura, and three very young children, Ryann, 4, Sean, 3, and Riley only 6 months as he was forced by the jet-fueled inferno to take a fatal leap.

Forget? Never. Forgive? I’ll get back to you on that.

Like millions I stared in dumbfounded horror at the

television as the first tower collapsed in a toxic eruption of dust and debris. Oh my God! Then my thoughts turned to Timmy. Maybe he was on vacation? Or a meeting somewhere else? Maybe home sick? Wouldn’t that be a lucky flu?

And I thought of Frankie O, a construction worker I knew as a kid on a summer job for the Parks Department in New York in ’73. Frank was moonlighting with us, having been laid off from Otis Elevator after completing his work on the World Trade Center.

Now it’s all gone; the Trade Center, Frankie O’s elevators and Tim Coughlin.

I wrote most of the above paragraphs 10 years ago when we still had hope for Afghanistan. Now, that too is gone.

The Taliban are back where they were when America was hit, where