The Watches of 9/11: The Lives They Help Us Remember

Margaret Benson used to take off her watch when she came home from work.

It is an ordinary enough habit that, under other circumstances, it might never have been written down. People remember anniversaries and vacations, promotions and weddings. The small gestures that surround those events often pass without notice: a coat hung by the door, keys placed in their usual spot, a watch unfastened at the end of the day. Yet those gestures can become some of the most intimate things we remember about someone.

After September 11, Port Authority police returned Margaret’s watch and rings to her husband. The watch was scratched, tarnished, and covered in dust. The museum’s account preserves both the object and her habit of removing it at home. 9/11 Memorial & Museum: Margaret Benson’s wristwatch

That is where the history becomes personal. We can look at damaged metal and understand that something terrible happened. Learning how someone wore it lets us begin to understand the life around it.

A wristwatch occupies an unusually close place in that life. We carry it through the commute, the working day, the errand on the way home. It becomes familiar through its weight and the way its strap settles against the wrist. A photograph can preserve the face of a watch long after the ordinary movements associated with it have disappeared from view.

The watches connected to September 11 invite us to recover some of those associations. They lead to five people with different kinds of work, different responsibilities, and different futures ahead of them. Following their stories also raises questions that matter to anyone who cares about watches: how an object acquires meaning, what deserves to be preserved, and how we keep a person’s history attached to the things they leave behind.

Margaret L. Benson: the life inside an ordinary routine

Margaret was fifty-one and had worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for thirty-three years. Her job in human resources took her to the seventy-first floor of the North Tower. She lived in Rockaway, New Jersey, with her husband, James, and had two children.

She also brought communion to elderly and hospitalized parishioners who could not attend church. Her family later gave the watch to the museum, where its record describes the hands stopped just before seven-thirty. Benson collection record

Margaret Benson’s recovered wristwatch. Photograph: Michael Hnatov, 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Gift of the Benson family.

Details of this kind give remembrance somewhere to rest. A job title tells us a person’s place in an organization. A habit or an act of care brings us closer to how that person moved through the world. In family histories, a practical kindness or a familiar gesture can carry as much recognition as an account of a major achievement.

This is a useful lesson for anyone keeping a family watch. The story that makes it meaningful may be something so ordinary that nobody has thought to record it. Perhaps its owner wound it over breakfast, wore it only on Sundays, or turned it inward while working. Those are examples of the kinds of details worth asking about in our own families. Once the person who remembers them is gone, an expensive appraisal cannot supply the missing answer.

The object can remain recognizable for generations. Keeping its associations alive requires someone to notice them, ask about them, and pass them on.

Michael T. Quilty: the years of work behind the uniform

Six days before the attacks, Lieutenant Michael Quilty marked twenty years with the FDNY. On September 11, he responded to the World Trade Center with Ladder Company 11 and was seen directing other firefighters after the North Tower was struck.

He was forty-two, lived on Staten Island with his wife, Susan, and their two teenagers, and was studying for the captain’s examination. His interests included carpentry, stained glass, scuba diving, and flying airplanes. The museum records his recovered black Casio digital watch in fourteen separate pieces, donated by Susan. 9/11 Memorial & Museum: Michael Quilty’s wristwatch

Michael Quilty’s Casio and the broken pieces of its strap. Photograph: Michael Hnatov, 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Gift of Susan Quilty.

The photograph gives the fragments a strange order. There is the case, still recognizable as a watch, and around it the broken lengths of strap. Reading about the man beside that image restores the sense of a life continuing to develop: experience accumulated, interests pursued, another examination being prepared for.

For watch enthusiasts, a familiar digital watch raises a question about the relationship between equipment and competence. We often use the phrase “tool watch” to describe an appearance or a set of specifications. On a working wrist, usefulness belongs to a larger system of skills, judgment, colleagues, and responsibilities. A tool earns its place by helping its wearer meet those responsibilities. The experience behind the wrist matters as much as anything written on the dial.

Remembering a professional fully also means remembering the person beyond the profession. Hobbies can seem like minor details in a short biography, yet they reveal where someone chose to spend the hours that were their own. They help preserve a whole person alongside the record of service.

In that context, a Casio has an equal claim on our attention to any more costly watch. The purchase price offers very little guidance about how much a particular object can mean to the people who recognize it.

Yamel Josefina Merino: a future already being built

Yamel Merino was twenty-four, raising an eight-year-old son in Yonkers. At MetroCare, she had advanced from the transport division to become an emergency medical technician. She hoped to continue her education and become a nurse.

When the South Tower collapsed, she was outside it providing medical assistance. Her recovered wristwatch has a dark fabric strap, torn away from the case on one side, and hands recorded at 10:05. The museum identifies its owner without naming a manufacturer. 9/11 Memorial & Museum: Yamel Merino’s wristwatch

Yamel Josefina Merino and her wristwatch. Photo pairing published by Watches of Espionage, which credits the watch photograph to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.

A second timepiece belonging to Merino also survived: a belt timer attached to a clip, bearing the MetroCare logo. The museum describes it as apparently undamaged. 9/11 Memorial & Museum: Merino’s belt timer

Beside her portrait, these small working objects give substance to an ambition. Her plans for further education grew out of work she was already doing. The next qualification lay ahead, while the responsibility of caring for people was already present.

An interrupted life contains more than the years that have passed. It also contains the direction in which someone was moving. A plan for school, a hoped-for promotion, the next stage of a child’s life: these help explain the depth of what a family loses, even when there is no object that can represent the future itself.

There is something worth carrying into our own lives here. We tend to describe ourselves by the next milestone, as though our contribution remains provisional until we reach it. A person can be learning, building, or beginning again while already doing work that matters. Attention to that work gives us a fuller measure of a life than a list of completed goals alone.

Todd M. Beamer: the man behind the words

Todd Beamer’s journey was supposed to be a one-day business trip from New Jersey to San Francisco. He was thirty-two, an Oracle account manager, and he and his wife, Lisa, were expecting their third child.

After United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked, he tried to reach Lisa by Airfone. When the call failed, he dialed an operator. He described events aboard the aircraft, relayed messages for his wife, and asked the operator to join him in the Lord’s Prayer. She later recalled hearing him address others on the plane: “Are you guys ready? Okay. Let’s roll.” National Park Service: Todd M. Beamer

Those words belong within a larger account of people communicating and organizing under terrible circumstances. The National Park Service describes how passengers and crew learned of the other attacks through telephone calls, voted to resist, and developed a plan together. Their effort to regain control continued until the hijackers crashed the aircraft in Pennsylvania. Flight 93 National Memorial: the collective decision to act

All forty passengers and crew members died. Beamer’s wristwatch was recovered from the crash site, its date display still showing 11. 9/11 Memorial & Museum exhibition

Hodinkee identifies the watch as a two-tone Rolex Datejust Turn-O-Graph with a tapestry dial. The photograph shows it beside his creased Oracle business card, an object the museum also documents. Hodinkee: Beamer’s Rolex, Museum record: Beamer’s business card

Todd Beamer’s Rolex and Oracle business card. Photograph reproduced by Everest Bands, with image source credited to The New York Times.

The business card is an especially moving companion to the watch. It belongs to the professional life Beamer had set out to conduct that morning. The telephone account preserves his concern for his family and his participation in the resistance. Seen together, the objects and testimony give a familiar name more of the person who bore it.

The lesson about courage in this account includes cooperation. Information reached the aircraft because people made calls and people on the ground answered them. A shared understanding became a shared decision. Remembering that process preserves the contributions of the passengers and crew around Beamer, as well as his own.

The words have endured because they were followed by action. Their history is strengthened when we keep the people, the communication, and the collective effort attached to them.

Thomas Canavan: returning home, and deciding what to carry

Thomas Canavan wore an inexpensive Milan quartz watch because he needed reliable timekeeping for his commute. On September 11, he was working on the forty-seventh floor of the North Tower when it was struck.

He evacuated and later escaped rubble after the South Tower collapsed. That evening, he met his wife beneath the clock at Grand Central. They took the 5:02 train home.

He put his watch in a drawer with his wallet and office identification. Months later, he examined it. The hour and minute hands showed 8:49, and the date remained on 11. The red seconds hand still moved through a short arc near the top of the dial, advancing and falling back until the battery ran out.

Canavan described this to Michael Hainey in a 2021 interview for Hodinkee. His watch had entered the museum’s collection. He told Hainey that he no longer wore one. Hodinkee: Michael Hainey’s interview with Thomas Canavan

Thomas Canavan’s Milan watch in its museum case. Photograph reproduced in Michael Hainey’s interview for Hodinkee.

That final detail deserves room in a watch publication. Enthusiasts often imagine continuity through an object: a watch worn again, repaired, inherited, carried into the next part of a life. There is also room for someone to set an object aside. Its meaning belongs first to the person whose experience gave it that meaning.

A family keepsake can bring comfort to one person and be difficult for another to live with every day. Respect for its history includes respect for those different relationships. Wearing, storing, sharing, or donating an object can each be a considered choice. Its importance does not oblige its owner to feel any particular way about it.

The museum can give the public access to a story while the person who lived it decides what place the object should have in daily life. That is a valuable kind of separation to remember when we speak about heirlooms. The next person entrusted with a watch also inherits the right to form a relationship with it of their own.

What stopped hands can, and cannot tell us

A stopped watch invites a powerful assumption: that the hands record the instant everything changed. The symbolism is easy to understand. The evidence requires more care.

A damaged watch’s displayed time, by itself, cannot establish the precise moment of an impact, a collapse, or its owner’s death. Establishing a timeline means comparing an object with other records and testimony. The reading on the dial is one piece of information; the explanation of how it reached that reading is another.

A clock from the Pentagon makes the distinction concrete. The Smithsonian holds a Skilcraft wall clock from the helipad fire station, knocked down when Flight 77 struck. Its hands stopped at 9:32. The museum’s catalog notes that it was apparently six minutes slow. Smithsonian: Pentagon helipad fire station clock

That small discrepancy offers a larger lesson in how to handle history. An emotionally compelling detail still needs to be checked. Leaving uncertainty visible protects the record from a story that is neater than the evidence allows.

The same care applies to identifying a watch. Where the collection record does not establish a brand or model, a resemblance in a photograph should remain a possibility. A precise answer is useful only when the evidence supports that precision.

Why preserving damage can be an act of care

For people who enjoy maintaining watches, the instinct to make a damaged object work again can be strong. The photographs in this article raise a different question: what would we lose if the visible damage were removed?

The 9/11 Memorial & Museum addresses that question directly in its conservation approach. It explains that damage can form part of an artifact’s historical significance. Its conservators consider interventions carefully, prioritize the condition in which objects entered the collection, and use documentation and preventive care to safeguard them. 9/11 Memorial & Museum: conservation

This helps explain why an object can be carefully cared for while remaining visibly broken. Its condition may hold information that a treatment could alter. Preserving that information takes expertise and a clear understanding of what the object represents.

There is a useful, modest application for ordinary watch ownership: establish what you want to preserve before deciding what you want to change. With an inherited piece, learn the history of its engraving, replaced parts, and visible wear. Photograph it and gather the account that goes with it. A watchmaker or conservator can then discuss proposed work with that history in view.

The useful habit is to pause long enough to understand what a mark means before deciding whether removing it would be an improvement. Good care begins with knowing what has been entrusted to you.

Keep the story with the watch

There is something any watch owner can do after closing this article: choose one watch that matters and give its history a written home. A page kept with the watch can carry details that would otherwise depend on somebody being there to explain them.

Include the owner’s name, when and how the watch was acquired, and why it was chosen or given. Add a photograph of the watch being worn, if one exists. Preserve a few words from the owner about its place in daily life. An account of a first job or a graduation is valuable; so is the explanation that it was the watch someone trusted for work.

Keep the distinction between knowledge and family tradition clear. If a date is approximate, say so. If a story came from a relative, record who told it. Leave a question unanswered when the answer is unknown. Future readers can understand an incomplete record more honestly than a confident guess that has hardened into fact.

Keep a copy of that history separately from the object, and make sure the people who may inherit it know where to find it. A receipt can establish a purchase. A few well-chosen sentences can preserve the relationship that made the purchase matter.

There is another lesson here about attention. We often ask an older relative about the important events in a life and move quickly past the routines. Ask about those, too. What did a working day look like? Which possessions went everywhere with them? What did they keep after changing jobs or moving house? The answers can give future generations a much more vivid sense of the person than an inventory ever could.

The time around the watch

At 68Watches, our interest begins with watches as things people use and live with. The stories of September 11 deepen that interest by asking us to look at the time around the object: the responsibilities that filled a day, the relationships that made returning home matter, the work and hopes that extended beyond the next glance at the dial.

The five watches here offer five entrances into that larger history. A visit to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s collection can carry us further, into the names, objects, and accounts that families and survivors have entrusted to it. Taking time with one complete story is a meaningful act of remembrance.

A watch can outlast the hand that fastened it, the person who gave it, and the circumstances in which it was worn. What reaches the future depends partly on the attention someone gives it now. We can preserve the object, ask the questions, write down the answers, and let the person remain larger than the thing.

That is the enduring value of remembering the watches of September 11. They give us something familiar to look at, and then invite us to keep looking until we begin to see the life around it.