One of the things those of us who lived through 9/11 will never forget is the people who chose to jump from the higher floors of the World Trade Center instead of succumbing to the fiery hell awaiting them inside the building. Most, if not all, of them were above the impact zone in the North Tower, the first to be hit.
It was certainly one of the more shocking aspects of the day, and one that shook me to the core during the early moments of the attack when we were still trying to figure out what had happened. I remember my neighbor calling me shortly after 9 AM that morning as I shopped at the local Safeway for that night's dinner. "Teri!" she screamed down the phone. "They're jumping!"
I knew then that an unimaginable nightmare was unfolding.
They had very few choices that day, those estimated 200 men and women who jumped, sometimes by themselves and sometimes in groups. But they could decide whether or not to remain in the inferno.
12-13 Marsh McLennan workers jump together from the 95th floor of the still-burning North Tower of the World Trade Center.
— 2001 Live (@25YearsAgoLive) September 11, 2026
Firefighters on the ground are frustrated that they can’t do much to help. pic.twitter.com/IeLsK4L9Kp
Twenty-five years later, a woman who worked as a death investigator for the New York City Medical Examiner on 9/11 wants to set the record straight: They're not "jumpers," says Barbara Butcher. Those nameless people we watched descend from high in the sky were pushed or they fell, she argues. And the words matter.
Butcher recalls sitting in a meeting about collecting WTC artifacts some months later when a colleague blurted out something about the jumpers having committed suicide.
My boss was always calm and dignified, but at that moment I saw the strain on his face as he tried to maintain his composure.
His anger was palpable.
He put his hands flat on the table in front of him and said, “Never use those words. Never.”
They were pushed out, he explained, by flames and smoke.
In fact, writes Butcher, the death certificates of every person killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11 read "homicide." Homicide, she notes, is defined as “death at the hands of another.” The people who jumped had been fighting for their lives.
"It is a fact that terrorists pushed these people to their deaths, murdering them," concludes Butcher.
Because they did not choose to die this way, she'd like the National September 11 Museum to change a sign outside a room displaying photos of the people falling from the Twin Towers – a sign that reads “those who jumped.” She writes:
To call these people “jumpers” fails to capture the anguish they experienced, their lack of choice.
It doesn’t honor them; it blames the victims rather than the terrorists.
Call them “those who fell from the windows” — or who were “pushed out by forces beyond their control.”
Whatever we choose, let’s use the right words.
That seems like a fair and small gesture that could be made to put things into perspective on one of the more gruesome, yet important, aspects of 9/11. People were literally pushed to what had to be the most terrifying decision of their lives.
We who witnessed those falls and still wrestle with the horror of it all might find this next bit comforting.
I was watching a 9/11 documentary a few days ago on YouTube in an ongoing attempt to make sense of that day when I came across a video that had been made in remembrance of the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. A man who was outside the WTC that day and had witnessed the falls of those who were pushed out by the terrorists had a unique perspective in coming to terms with it.
Maybe, said the man, they weren't falling in terror and abject fear at all. They could have, he said, just as easily been at peace as they descended.
He continued, maybe before they took that last step out of the building, they had already stepped into the arms of God and were flying amongst the angels while the rest of us watched in horror.
How beautiful is that thought? Maybe they weren't falling at all, but had already been caught.
And maybe that is the better way to remember them – not as “jumpers,” not even simply as people who had to make the cruelest choice of all, but as innocent souls murdered by terrorists who, in the end, could not take from them the promise of what came next.
