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Brucie Porter stands outside near the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan with One World Trade Center rising behind her against a bright blue sky.

For more than a year now, with rare exception, Brucie Porter has seen at least some of the footage every weekday. The smoke. The debris. The streets. And for more than a year now, she's recognized the view.  

“I’ll see footage, and then I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that’s outside my window.’” 

Her office is directly behind the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City. It technically has an address. But it doesn’t really need it.  

She works at Ground Zero.  

She was 3 years old on Sept. 11, 2001. She doesn’t remember a second of it. Now it’s her job to ensure others never forget it.  

Since earning her doctorate in history from Auburn in 2025, the Auburn native has served as an exhibition developer at the museum, tasked with closing the widening gap between those who experienced 9/11 and those who know it only as a date, a point on a textbook timeline — if that. 

“When the museum opened in 2014, the language around 9/11 was very much still in the public space,” Porter said. “You could say Al Qaeda, and 99% of people are going to know what you’re talking about. That’s how the museum was designed.” 

But 12 years later, it's no longer how the museum can operate. Porter said 80% of its visitors now have no personal memory of 9/11 — same as her. 

They may know the broad strokes. Planes. Terrorists. But the cultural trauma? That's harder to inherit.  

So, Porter says, the museum is adapting. New labels. New language. But in addition to adding explanations to names and places that no one used to need, they're doing their best to recontextualize the conversation. 

“We’re also starting to look at how we can sort of build out some more framework to interpret the 9/11 story for a new generation,” Porter said. 

Enter, for example, Peter Parker.   

A Marvel comic page shows Spider-Man and Captain America overlooking New York City as bright columns of light rise from the site of the World Trade Center.

“Marvel’s universe is New York, and so Marvel had to respond in some way to 9/11." 

“Responding in Ink,” one of the museum’s newest exhibitions, shows how. Its pages place Spider-Man in conversation with firefighters and police officers as comic-book artists grapple with how to pay tribute to the workers of Ground Zero. 

It might be an unexpected way into the broader 9/11 story. But that sort of I-never-thought-of-it-that-way familiarity? That’s kind of the point, Porter said. 

She took a similar approach with the first exhibition she led. 

It started with an Argentina jersey. 

After all, the World Cup was coming up. And it was coming to America. The final match would be played just miles from the museum. Soccer’s popularity was soaring. 

It seemed like it could work. And it did. “The World’s Game: Soccer and 9/11” explores the attacks through their impact on the global soccer community. Among other things, it includes the roster for a U.S. women’s national team match scheduled for that day — a match that never happened. A team photograph. And an autographed soccer ball belonging to an FDNY firefighter who coached his daughter’s soccer team. He died responding to the attacks. 

The Argentina jersey belonged to another FDNY member who played on the department’s soccer team and wore it while watching matches each week. The museum contacted his family to borrow it for the exhibition.  

“The World’s Game: Soccer and 9/11” exhibition shows a large photograph of U.S. soccer players holding an American flag and a display case containing a red David Beckham jersey.

That's a big part of the job, Porter said. Interpreting artifacts — sometimes, the more seemingly ordinary the better.  

Some of the museum’s bigger pieces speak for themselves, loudly. Giant forks of twisted steel, pieces that convey the size of the towers and the force required to bring them down.    

The smaller things work differently — on different levels, Porter said. Walkie-talkies. Sharpies. Watches stopped at the scariest seconds in American history.  The everyday has a way of articulating the unimaginable in ways that giant pieces of rubble might not. A pair of dust-covered black pumps like the ones Michelle Dupont donated can put you in another person's shoes.  

She learned how to handle objects — and stories — at Auburn. It’s a Porter family tradition of sorts; her father and two uncles are Auburn history grads. 

While completing her doctorate, Porter worked as a researcher and exhibition lead for the Alabama African American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium. She conducted research for St. Paul United Methodist Church's first permanent exhibition, helping reconnect its congregation with more than a century of social justice work, and worked to protect heritage sites in Montgomery's Centennial Hill neighborhood. The Southeastern Museums Conference named her a "One to Watch" in 2024. 

 

A damaged section of an airplane cabin with a window opening is displayed among aircraft wreckage inside the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Auburn, she says, taught her how to tackle the real challenge of public history: How to fit a life on a label.  

A firefighter's helmet may arrive with stories about the man who wore it. He was a father who loved fishing. He was funny. His daughter remembers this. His friends remember that. 

Porter may know all of it. Then she has to decide what to keep, what to cut 

“There’s only so much space and time,” she said. 

It's heavy work. The museum understands that. They accommodate it. Need to take a walk? Take one. Need an hour? Take it. Need to go home? See you tomorrow. 

“No one’s expecting you to just sit at your desk and sit with that,” Porter said.  

She won't be sitting at her desk this morning, either.  

On Sept. 11, it is all hands on deck. Porter worked her first anniversary commemoration last year, only two months after arriving at the museum. She gave directions and passed out water to survivors and victims’ families who came to sit beside a child's name. Or to hear their parent’s name read aloud. She watched them walk through the museum. She saw them tear up.  

Different exhibits and pieces hit people in different ways.  

The museum’s memorial exhibition, “In Memoriam," is a big one. Nearly 3,000 faces cover the walls. Interactive tables show family photographs, life stories, the voices of people who knew them. But nothing is said about how they died. Only how they lived. A name becomes a face. A face becomes a person.  

What stops Porter in her tracks, though, does the opposite. It’s a piece of a plane — a section of the cabin — sitting on the floor. No name. No photograph. No voice.  

She wonders the same thing every time. 

“Who was looking out that window?”