A quarter of a century has passed since September 11th 2001. Yet for anyone who has actually lost someone, the number on the calendar barely matters. Ten years, twenty-five years, fifty years. Grief does not observe milestones. The ache a mother feels for her daughter is the same whether it has been five years or a hundred.
Last night, a small crowd gathered on a hillside in Jerusalem Park, overlooking the Ha’arazim Valley, at a memorial most people have never had reason to visit. Rising from the plaza is a nine-meter bronze sculpture shaped like an American flag, its upper edge curling into a flame reaching toward the sky. Set into the base, behind a pane of glass, is an actual shard of steel from the foundation of one of the fallen Twin Towers. Along the surrounding wall, plaques list nearly three thousand names, the men and women who died that day, including five Israelis. At an event organized by the Jewish National Fund, Former Governor Mike Huckabee stood among those memorializing the fallen on September 11th. So did Jeffrey Goldgrab, a member of the Israel365 team, who had traveled there for one reason: to remember his cousin.
Her name was Nancy Morgenstern. She was 32 years old, working on the 104th floor of the North Tower for Cantor Fitzgerald, when the first plane hit. This week, her mother graciously took the time to speak with me about her daughter, so that anyone reading this might know her too, not as a name on a memorial wall, but as the person she actually was. What follows is her story, told largely in her own words.
From Travel Agent to Bond Trading Floor
Nancy grew up in Brooklyn, one of five children in a close, observant family. She graduated from Queens College with a degree in political science and became a travel agent at Tzell Travel in Manhattan. Many of her clients worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, and Nancy handled their business trips and their family vacations with the same relentless care.
“She never left a stone unturned,” her mother said. “When they wanted something, she tried to get it for them. Sometimes it was not easy, but she went over and beyond and extended herself.”
One of those clients, a bond trader named Timmy Gracioso, noticed. He offered Nancy a job as his personal assistant at Cantor Fitzgerald. She had no background in finance. It did not matter.
“He said, ‘You’re so efficient. You track everything. You help us with every single detail. I need you to work for me,'” her mother recalled.
Nancy took the leap. By September 2001, she had been at Cantor Fitzgerald for five months. She loved the energy of the trading floor and the young, vibrant office around her. Her mother remembers her asking, before she made the switch, “I’ve been working for Tzell for so many years. What do I do? Do I leave them?” Her family encouraged her to go. It felt like the start of something.
The Only Jewish Girl on the Team
Ask her mother about Nancy and the conversation turns quickly to cycling. Nancy moved into a Manhattan apartment with two roommates and, almost by chance, joined a Backroads bike trip through Utah and Arizona. She already knew how to ride. She did not yet know it would become the center of her life.
She got hooked. She started riding in Central Park, met other cyclists, and eventually joined a competitive racing team, the only Jewish woman on the roster.
Keeping Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest observed from Friday evening to Saturday night, meant Nancy could not race or travel on Saturdays. When her team competed on Shabbos, she found a way to join afterward instead. On multi day cycling trips, she packed her own kosher food and kept it cold with ice in a bathtub when there was no refrigerator. Once, camping over Shabbat, she consulted a rabbi with a shayla, a formal religious question, about how to carry her belongings without violating Jewish law while sleeping outdoors among non-Jewish teammates. She figured it out every time.
“She was very supportive,” her mother said, describing a memory from a mountain climb when a friend wanted to give up. “She literally pushed her up in the climb.” In racing, when cyclists ride close together for safety, one fall can bring down the whole group. Nancy often rode at the back, watching over the others. “She was a team player.”
Her passion outlived her. Her younger brother, seven years her junior, now runs marathons, competes in triathlons, and cycles every day. Her mother believes Nancy put it in his blood. Her father never learned to ride a bike as a child; his own mother would not allow it. After Nancy died, one of her cycling coaches finally taught him, and for years he rode her bike. Now, at 83, he has traded the bike for daily jogs. His wife is 79. The day of our conversation was their wedding anniversary, the same week they mark the anniversary of losing their daughter.
September 11th, 2001
Nancy’s mother remembers the exact moment the phone rang. It was her youngest daughter, calling before 9 a.m.
“She said, ‘Mommy, turn the television on. Something happened at the towers,'” her mother recalled. Weeks earlier, the family had passed the North Tower on a trip upstate. Nancy had come downstairs to say hello. It was the only time any of them had physically stood near the building where she worked.
What followed was days of not knowing. Nancy’s mother called her doorman to learn whether Nancy had left with her bike that morning. She had not, which meant she had gone to work. The family traveled into the city once it reopened, going from hospital to hospital, searching for any information.
Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 employees that day, more than any other company in the towers. Howard Lutnick, the firm’s chief executive at the time and now the United States Secretary of Commerce, survived only because he was dropping his son off at kindergarten that morning. His own brother, working inside the building, did not survive. Lutnick organized gatherings for the families in the aftermath.
“It was like we were all of a sudden a family,” Nancy’s mother said. “He spoke to us in warm ways. Whatever we could do for you, we’re here for you.”
Nancy’s friends brought her toothbrush and hairbrush to the medical examiner’s office, hoping for a match. Under Jewish law, a family does not sit shiva, the traditional seven-day mourning period, while there remains hope that a missing person is alive. Nancy’s family did not give up hope. They waited two and a half years before her remains were identified and she could finally be buried in Ramat Beit Shemesh. Only then did they sit shiva. Even now, twenty-five years later, remains are still being identified. Some families are still waiting.
Carrying Her Forward
Grief reshaped the family in different ways. Nancy’s mother turned further into her faith, deepening her davening, the Hebrew word for prayer. Her father could not find words. Instead, he spent two years gathering photographs and memories into a self-published book, Nancy Morgenstern: Testimonies to a Life of Joy, Faith, and Passion, which the family still mails to anyone who asks, free of charge. You can request a copy here.
“That was really his therapy,” his wife said. “It’s the only way he was able to cope.”
Twenty five years later, the family is still finding ways to cope, and still finding ways to make sure Nancy is not forgotten. She was a daughter, a sister, a cyclist, a woman of quiet religious conviction who found a way to keep her commitments even at thirty miles an hour on a mountain road. Her family has spent a quarter of a century making sure she is remembered not for how she died, but for how fully she lived.
Before we hung up, I told her mother that there was now one more person in the world who knew Nancy’s story, and that I would do what I could to honor her neshama, her soul.
May her memory be a blessing.
Nancy’s brother, Yaakov, is one of the speakers on an upcoming Israel365 News panel, 25 Years After 9/11: Three Men, One Morning That Changed Everything, a live webinar with Rabbi Pesach Wolicki alongside Frank Gaffney and Dan Burmawi on Monday, September 14, 2026. Hear more about Nancy’s story directly from her brother, and commemorate 9/11 together by registering for the webinar.
Register for the webinar here.
Visit the Nancy Morgenstern Memorial Fund Facebook group here:
https://www.facebook.com/remembernancy911/
