9/11 Attacks Cast a Shadow 12 Years Later

Traumatic incident for the country

Michael Ollis was not even in high school when terrorists slammed jetliners into the World Trade Center towers.

This summer, 12 years later, he was serving his third combat tour with the United States Army when insurgents attacked his base in Afghanistan.

Staff Sergeant Ollis, 24, a Staten Island native, was killed. He was one of 92 New Yorkers who enlisted after 9/11 and died in battles that were spawned in the smoldering rubble of ground zero.

As the families of those killed on 9/11 gathered on Wednesday morning in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia to mark the anniversary of the attacks, Sergeant Ollis's death, one of thousands during a decade of war, offered a reminder that the costs of what happened 12 years ago are still being borne across the globe.