Published Sep 8, 2026, 3:00 AM EDT
They Lost Their Husbands at the Pentagon on 9/11. 25 Years Later, They're Helping Others Through Grief
They lost their husbands at the Pentagon on 9/11. Twenty-five years later, two widows are helping other military families navigate grief.
For Masako Murphy, one of the most important conversations after Sept. 11, 2001, began with something her son couldn't tell her. He was angry at his father. His father had been killed at the Pentagon, and he couldn't understand why he hadn't escaped after seeing the airplane coming. Murphy didn't know her son was carrying that anger until one of his mentors at a grief camp told her. "He never showed me anything like that," Murphy recalled in an interview with Military.com. The revelation gave mother and son a chance to talk about what had actually happened. His father couldn't simply look out and see the aircraft approaching, she explained. There hadn't been time to escape. The conversation helped both of them. Twenty-five years after 9/11, Murphy and another Pentagon widow, Laurie Laychak, say moments like that help explain something difficult to see from the outside: A catastrophic loss doesn't end when the funerals, memorials and anniversaries do. It becomes part of a family's life.
