Historic events, like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City 25 years ago this Friday, live in memory, at least for those who bore witness.

My uncles enlisted in the Army the next day after Pearl Harbor and later served in combat in Europe. Another uncle, a sophomore in high school at the time, told us he and his friends were playing catch in the backyard when his mother leaned out the kitchen window and yelled, “The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor!”

“We had no idea where Pearl Harbor was,” he told us. Three years later he was a crewman on a cargo ship that was hit by a kamikaze plane off Okinawa.

My brother and I were sitting at the table playing cards and listening to the radio when a bulletin came on announcing that “shots had been fired in Dallas” at the presidential motorcade.

Home on Navy funeral leave with our mother after our stepfather had died, we called our respective commands and asked for instructions. “Stay where you are,” was the order. “We know how to reach you.”

That sunny September morning at the Freeman started off with the usual routines of a small-town newspaper. Most of us arrived for work between 8 and 8:30. Reporters were conferring with editors on their assignments. At about 8:45, phones began ringing all over the place. One of the editors yelled out, “Look at the TVs!” Smoke was pouring out of the top floors of one of the towers. Nobody knew what that meant. Maybe a small plane had hit the tower.

The third call I picked up on – was it the fifth? – was from my son David in Brooklyn. A 2000 graduate of NYU, he’d been looking for work for almost a year. His tiny apartment in Park Slope had only one window, and it looked directly at the tip of Manhattan.

“Dad!” he exclaimed, “Something has hit the World Trade Center! There are all kinds of smoke and fire on the upper floors!”

There was a pause and then he cried, “Holy crap! Another plane has just hit the other tower!” The world was waking up to 9/11.

I was proud of my editors that day. The Freeman, before that, was more of a freelance operation. The city hall reporter did his or her thing, likewise the police reporters and the county reporters. Former county executive Mike Hein used to call it the silo syndrome.”

That day, the editors took charge, assigned every reporter to a specific phase of the fast-breaking story. Meetings for updates were held about every hour as the story evolved.

As a political columnist, I didn’t have much to do at first. I still had my son on the phone.

“David,” I told him, "I want to switch you over to a reporter, Hallie Arnold. Tell her everything you see. Answer all her questions as best as you can. We’re making history today.”

David Reynolds’ eye-witness account of 9/11 with Hallie’s reporting led Page 1 the next day. My “newspaperman.”

It was a long day at the office. Readers, some frantic for information, clogged the phone lines. Some had family or friends working in the towers. We took their names and phone numbers and promised to call back if we heard anything.

The paper went to press around 1 and reporters got busy with what we called “folo stories” for the Wednesday editions.

I left around 4 o’clock feeling we’d all done a good job with what we had. There would be plenty of updates to come.

Tuesday afternoon was our regular men’s league date at Twaalfskill Golf Club in Kingston, so I headed over there hoping to clear my mind from what had been an intense day.

My partner that year was Phil Sinagra, a Republican county legislator from Hurley. I’d played the last few previous seasons with mayor T.R. Gallo, a Democrat.

Our opponents didn’t show up, so Phil and I played alone. We couldn’t lose, which made Phil happy. Phil, like Gallo, was a very competitive guy.

I butchered the first four holes, more so than usual. I was literally hitting every shot sideways.

“I can’t play this game, Phil,” I told him. “I can’t get this thing out of my head. I’m going home.”

Phil Sinagra might not have graduated from Harvard, but he was a wise man.

“What do you want to go home for?” he said. “You’re just going to stare at those towers coming down. It’s a nice day. Let’s just finish the round and have dinner at the club.”

“Finish your dinner,” he said. I went home and, of course, I watched the towers come down over and over, wondering how something like this could happen to our country.

About a week later, David, Phyllis and I went to Manhattan to view the site. It was fenced off to the public, but firefighters and cops and construction workers were on the pile. Smoke and smells permeated the area. Few knew the air itself was toxic, though then-senator Hillary Clinton raised that alarm.

Perceptions of 9/11 have changed over the last quarter-century. Megan McArdle, a syndicated columnist from the Washington Post, wrote on Tuesday of the towers “falling,” but with no mention of what caused their destruction. Some young people, unborn at the time the planes hit, blame the United States for the attack. That makes me angry, and sad.

This is what they’re teaching in schools these days? I hope they don’t show up with placards and bullhorns at commemorative ceremonies at the site on Friday. It will be a very emotional day.