By JC Glick, CEO, The COMMIT Foundation – On the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, we should look backward.
We should remember the nearly 3,000 lives taken that morning, the families forever changed, and the first responders who ran toward danger when every instinct told others to run away. We should remember the fear, confusion, courage, and extraordinary unity that followed.
We should also remember the generation that answered the call in the years that came next.
For two decades, millions of American service members stepped forward to defend our nation. Their spouses and families carried the weight of repeated deployments, missed milestones, uncertainty, injury, and loss. Members of the intelligence community served quietly, often without recognition. Our allied partners stood beside us, fought with us, sacrificed with us, and reminded us that defending freedom has never been an American responsibility alone.
We should be profoundly grateful for all of them.
But gratitude becomes incomplete when it leaves their service in the past tense.
That war may have ended. The uniform may have come off. The mission may have changed. But these men and women haven’t stopped serving.
They are serving in our classrooms, hospitals, factories, laboratories, boardrooms, small businesses, police and fire departments, skilled trades, universities, nonprofits, farms, technology companies, and local governments.
They are building infrastructure, strengthening supply chains, developing new technologies, creating jobs, teaching our children, caring for our neighbors, coaching teams, mentoring young people, and leading organizations of every size.
They are no longer always serving in the direct defense of our nation. Now, many are helping build the nation they once defended.
That distinction matters.
Too often, we talk about military transition as if success means finding a job, translating a résumé, or learning to operate in a civilian workplace. Those things are important, but they are not enough. Transition is not simply a change in employment. It is a transformation in identity, purpose, community, and the way a person chooses to contribute.
The real question is not only, “What will you do next?”
It is, “Who are you becoming, and how will you use everything you have learned in service of what comes next?”
At The COMMIT Foundation, we see the answer every day.
We see veterans bringing leadership, discipline, perspective, and responsibility into every part of the American economy. We see military spouses finally receiving the space to recognize their own ambitions, experiences, and potential—not simply as supporters of someone else’s service, but as talented individuals with contributions of their own to make. We see intelligence professionals and allied partners carrying hard-earned wisdom into new organizations and communities.
The economic effect is significant. These men and women do not simply fill positions. They strengthen teams, improve systems, build businesses, create employment, mentor others, and help organizations become more capable.
Our internal modeling estimates that every $1 million invested in COMMIT can support about 561 Fellows whose workforce participation represents $28.1 million to $44.9 million in annual earnings. This is not a claim that COMMIT creates that value. The value is already within these men and women. Our role is to help them gain clarity, remove barriers, recognize what they carry forward, and connect that potential to the places where it can matter most.
But even that economic impact tells only part of the story.
How do we calculate the value of the veteran who coaches a youth team, mentors a young employee, serves on a school board, builds a stronger neighborhood, or helps another veteran through a difficult moment?
How do we measure the military spouse who starts a company, strengthens a nonprofit, teaches in a classroom, supports a family, or creates opportunities for other spouses?
How do we account for the leader who enters an organization and quietly raises the standard—not by talking about what they did in the past, but by being present and taking responsibility for what happens next?
That is community impact. It may be harder to place on a balance sheet, but it is no less real.
I often think about the distinction between being a civilian and being a citizen. All of us may live as civilians, but citizenship is something we practice.
Civilians consume. Citizens contribute.
Citizens recognize that they are responsible for more than their own comfort or advancement. They participate. They build. They serve. They take what they have been given and use it to improve others’ lives.
That spirit is not exclusive to those who wore the uniform. But our military community has lived it under some of the most demanding conditions imaginable. Now, the opportunity is not to ask them to leave that spirit behind. It is to help them adapt it, expand it, and carry it into their next chapter.
We should never ask veterans to spend the rest of their lives looking backward, defined only by what they once did. We should honor their service while also expecting—and helping them—to continue growing.
Their greatest contribution may still be ahead of them.
On this anniversary, remembrance should inspire more than gratitude. It should create responsibility.
Our responsibility is to remember those we lost. To care for those who carry visible and invisible wounds. To stand beside the families who sacrificed. To welcome home those who served. But it is also to recognize these men and women for what they can still contribute—and to create pathways for that contribution to reach our communities, our economy, our institutions, and our future.
The story of the post-9/11 generation is not finished because the war ended.
They are not resting on their laurels. They are moving forward. They are taking the spirit that once carried them into harm’s way and applying it to the challenges directly in front of them. They continue to lead, continue to build, and continue to serve.
The theater of service has changed. The responsibility has not.
As long as these men and women continue to lead and serve—and as long as the rest of us choose to join them in that spirit—our communities will become stronger, our nation will remain strong, and our world will continue to become better.
Perhaps the best way to honor what they defended is to help them continue building it.
