Four Scarsdale High School faculty members shared personal accounts of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with students during a lunchtime panel on Sept. 11, as first reported by The Maroon, the school's student newspaper, on Monday, Sept. 21.

The event marked the 25th anniversary and was the first time the school organized such a panel. Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Dr. Edgar McIntosh and Principal Kenneth Bonamo planned the session and were among the speakers, along with math teacher Tianhong Ying and athletic director Cynthia Parrott.

Each panelist had a direct connection to the attacks. McIntosh was teaching elementary school in Greenwich Village when the first plane struck. Bonamo was in his third year of teaching on Staten Island, where several of his students had parents who worked in the Twin Towers or were firefighters called to respond. Ying worked near the World Trade Center and evacuated Manhattan on foot. Parrott spoke about the Folley family, close friends who lost two members to the attacks and their aftermath.

"What stays with me most, though, is the waiting," McIntosh said at the panel.

Tommy Folley, a firefighter with Rescue 3, died on Sept. 11, 2001. His brother Danny Folley, also a Rescue 3 firefighter, searched the rubble until he recovered Tommy's remains. Danny Folley died of 9/11-related pancreatic cancer in February 2020. The Folley family created the 9/11 Education Foundation in their honor to support education about the attacks and their lasting toll.

The panel drew an engaged student audience, McIntosh and Bonamo told The Maroon. Bonamo said the firsthand accounts were especially important because no current student, and some younger faculty, were alive on Sept. 11, 2001.

Scarsdale Mayor Justin Arest echoed that point in a community letter proclaiming Sept. 11, 2026, a Day of Remembrance and Service. For children in Scarsdale's schools, Arest wrote, Sept. 11 "is history rather than memory."