Next generation who never met loved ones killed in 9/11 pledges to ‘Never forget’

They are keeping a light shining on our darkest day.

A new generation who were not yet born on Sept. 11, 2001, solemnly helped read out the names of nearly 3,000 fallen loved ones at Ground Zero Friday – keeping their memories alive 25 years after the terror attacks.

Young speaker after speaker heartbreakingly spoke about their lost relatives, mourning the unrealized moments ripped away as terrorists slammed jets into the World Trade Center on a bright blue morning ultimately clouded by plumes of gray ash.

“Grandma, I never got to meet you, but you’ve been with me my entire life,” said the granddaughter of Barbara Walsh – an administrative assistant at Marsh & McLennan, whose offices were in the North Tower hit by Flight 11.

The young woman told the crowd of families, survivors, first responders and dignitaries that while she could only visit the name etched on the memorial’s reflecting pool, she still carries the pain and loss of that day through her loved ones.

“I’m just begging to scratch the surface of understanding the magnitude of what it must have felt like,” the girl said about the tragedy.

“I remember asking my uncle if people my age would ever forget. He said it was our job to make sure they never did,” she said.

“To my family and everyone born after 9/11 who grew up carrying a loss that they never personally experienced, but still feel the sinking pain in their stomach at the mention of 9/11, I promise you, we promise we will remember.”

The multitudes of New Yorkers and Americans like Walsh’s granddaughter are only growing with each passing year.

The 9/11 Memorial & Museum estimates that a third of Americans alive today were not yet born as the Sept. 11 attacks held the world transfixed in horror.

One of them – Manuel Damota – was just a four-month-old embryo in his mother’s womb when his namesake father perished at the World Trade Center.

Damota, now 24, described the past quarter-century of loss as an “empty chair, empty plate” at the family dinner table.

“A lifetime of wondering what you would think, what you would say, what kind of father he would have been and who I would have become if I had the chance to know him. I spent my whole life knowing my father in the memories of others,” said Damota, saying he even wonders what kind of arguments he would have had with his dad.

“So many of us have empty chairs of our own. We carry their memories and their love.”

Damota, Sr. was a carpenter who went to the Windows of the World for a meeting that morning on upcoming work planned for the restaurant.

He had an 11-year-old son and another on the way.

“My son never got a chance to meet his father, to do anything with his father,” his widow, Barbara, told The Post after the ceremony.

“He and his brother are very close. He and his father are exactly alike. In every way,” she said, chuckling.

Youths increasing took center stage as the terror attack’s quarter-century anniversary approached, with 28 readers during last year’s ceremonies being born after the attacks.

Representatives with the 9/11 Memorial & Museum couldn’t immediately confirm whether this year’s number of readers surpassed those in 2025, but said the tally was “significant.”

Outreach to youthful New Yorkers also ramped up during this year’s anniversary.

City Council members invested $1 million to educate the next generation on 9/11.

“Forrest Gump” actor Gary Sinise likewise joined the Sept. 11 education mission by providing free trips to Ground Zero, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, as well as providing his voice to a new documentary “The Heroism and Resiliency of 9/11: From Tragedy to Triumph.”

Those students’ Millennial predecessors looked back at the day they watched the tragedy unfold on classroom television screens or even from Lower Manhattan playgrounds that were buried in clouds of white smoke. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani was a 9-year-old student at the time – 25 years later, he attended the memorial for the first time as head of City Hall, along with other dignitaries, including Vice President JD Vance and former Presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama.

Three former mayors — Rudy Giuliani Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio — also looked on during the poignant name-reading ceremony, which included a young girl who delivered an emotional tribute to a grandfather who never lived to meet her.

The girl read the name of Kevin Patrick Conners, a 55-year-old military veteran who was working as a senior vice president of Euro Brokers, Inc., a brokerage firm with offices in the World Trade Center.

“Not a day passes that we don’t think about,” she said. “We love you. And I know you’re smiling at us.”