A former New York City Transit Authority first responder who arrived at Ground Zero after the towers had fallen is sharing his account with Utah families this week, as a free exhibit marking a quarter-century since the September 11 attacks continues through Monday in South Jordan. Hector Soto said the training he'd taken couldn't prepare him for what he was about to see when he got to the site.
The exhibit, called Utah Remembers: The 9/11 Project, is being held at the USU Bastian Agricultural Center and features an immersive timeline of the attacks along with firsthand accounts from people who were at Ground Zero, according to FOX 13 News Utah. Soto described witnessing families searching for their loved ones in the aftermath, and he said he hopes younger generations gain a deeper understanding of what happened and why it matters. “They need to know what happened,” Soto said, per the station's report.
South Jordan City partnered with the Major Brent Taylor Foundation to bring the exhibit to the region, and the event showcases the work of nonprofit and service organizations that recruit community members throughout the day. The foundation is named for Major Brent Taylor, the sitting Mayor of North Ogden who enlisted in the Utah Army National Guard after 9/11 and was killed during an insider attack in Afghanistan in November 2018, as CBS News reported at the time. Taylor's widow, Jennie Taylor, helped establish the foundation to honor his combined military and mayoral service. After his death, the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation paid off the mortgage on the Taylor family's Utah home, according to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
A Physical Bridge Across a Generational Gap
The construction management students in Riverton who built the exhibit's display walls were born after 2001, a fact that shaped how the physical space came together. Construction management students at the Jordan Academy for Technology and Careers in Riverton built roughly 400 display walls for the exhibit, executing about 2,000 wood cuts and 8,000 screws, according to KSL.com. Those students used the build to connect directly with 9/11 history despite having no living memory of the attacks.
The exhibit also integrates customized field trip programming for 5th, 8th, and 11th-grade students aligned with Utah social studies standards, along with an interactive Touch-a-Truck display featuring emergency and military vehicles, per Alpine Online. The event additionally includes a professional career fair spotlighting military, medical, fire, police, civic, and educational professions. Utah Remembers: The 9/11 Project is free and open to everyone, running Thursday through Monday.
The Health Toll That Keeps Growing
The push to preserve firsthand testimony carries added urgency because the health consequences of Ground Zero exposure are still unfolding a quarter-century later. Ground Zero-related health studies show that more than 57,000 members of the federal World Trade Center Health Program have been diagnosed with cancer, according to the Economic Times. The federal program monitors and treats enrolled members, per Citizens for the Extension of the James Zadroga Act.
Utah's Own Ties to September 11
Utah's connection to the attacks is not only institutional. Three Utah natives were killed on September 11, 2001: Mary Alice Wahlstrom and her daughter Carolyn Beug aboard American Airlines Flight 11, and Utah State University alumnus Brady Howell at the Pentagon, according to KSL.com. A permanent memorial honoring the three victims was dedicated at the USU Botanical Center in Kaysville.
The USU Bastian Agricultural Center is hosting this year's exhibit. Nearby Sandy City is referenced in connection with local September 11 remembrance.
Fire professions are part of the article's broader discussion of line-of-duty service. This is not the first time the Major Brent Taylor Foundation's annual 9/11 Project has come through Utah — the exhibit was hosted at the Spanish Fork Fairgrounds in 2025 — but this year's South Jordan run includes testimony and a physical exhibit for a generation of students meeting the history for the first time.
