GBH Daily: ‘I want my mom to be remembered’

☀️Sunny, with highs in the 70s. Sunset is at 7 p.m.

Today marks 25 years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Thank you to everyone who shared their memories of the day, including Erin from Brookline, who said her New York-bound flight was one of the planes diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, after the attacks began. “The week that followed was obviously quite sad, but also incredibly beautiful in a different way as the people of Gander cooked more food than I’ve ever seen, opened their homes and hearts and reminded us why Canadians are some of the best people on this earth,” Erin wrote. “When we finally arrived back to the city [New York], it was another wave of emotions. … When I went to work the next week another wave of sadness hit when I saw the thousands of pictures lining the streets and subway stations with ‘Missing’ on them. It was heartbreaking to know that these were all most likely deceased individuals that never made it home that day.”

Four Things to Know

1. Public schools in Springfield have been closed all week because of a Labor Day cyberattack on its systems in which hackers gained access to some medical information. In Everett, a separate cyberattack prompted officials to close City Hall.

These attacks are severe enough that officials have decided it’s not safe to have students at schools or residents at city hall, said Kevin Powers, who teaches in the Cybersecurity, Risk & Governance Program at Boston College Law School. Attackers are usually seeking ransom payments, he told GBH’s Curiosity Desk. And local officials usually can’t rely on federal law enforcement for help, instead turning to software and insurance companies for assistance. “You’re left to minimal budgets and minimal protections,” he said. You can hear his full explanation of the cyberattacks here. 

2. A superior court judge in Boston ruled last week that the State Police must release the audit logs for its Flock cameras to the ACLU of Massachusetts. Those cameras are equipped with license plate readers that collect information about vehicles on the road and compile it into databases law enforcement can search.

Twenty-five municipalities in Massachusetts have canceled contracts with Flock in the last year and a half, some because of concerns over police officers using databases to search for former partners’ vehicles.

3. A teenager and his father are suing the Nauset Regional School District on the Cape, saying school employees failed to protect the teenager from racist harassment that led him to a suicide attempt.

“No one stopped it. No one stepped in to make sure that he felt safe and protected, even after … an attempt to commit suicide,” said Brooke Simone, an attorney for Lawyers for Civil Rights. “Families deserve to know that someone is going to hold this district accountable for their failure to step up and to protect students of color.”

4. The nonprofit Welcoming America gave Boston four stars out of a possible five for the city’s efforts to welcome immigrants. It’s the first city in Massachusetts to be designated a Welcoming City by the nonprofit.

Some of the initiatives that helped Boston earn the designation include the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement, which offers free legal consultations to people navigating the immigration system, and the city’s You Belong Here campaign.

25 years after Sept. 11, daughter of heroic Mass. flight attendant lets bravery be her guide

Flight attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney was 35 when she boarded American Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11, 2001. When the flight was hijacked, she got on the phone with ground manager Michael Woodward and spoke with him for 25 minutes, giving investigators information, including seat numbers, they used to identify the hijackers who crashed the plane into the World Trade Center’s North Tower.

Sweeney’s daughter, Anna Sweeney Rossman, was just 5 years old when her mother died. Now she’s a mom of two living in Acton, like her mom did.

“I think about this often, because I’m only a couple years younger than she was when she passed,” Sweeney Rossman told GBH’s Marilyn Schairer. “Everything I do with my daughters, I’m thinking, ‘Was she thinking this when she was raising children? How did she navigate this? What would she be doing in this situation?’”

Sweeney Rossman’s daughters are 19 months and 2 months old. “She would have been the best grandmother,” she said. “The short time I had with her, she was the best mom.”

Schairer explored Sweeney’s life and the lives of those who have received the Madeline Amy Sweeney Award for Civilian Bravery, given to Massachusetts residents who act courageously in times of crisis. The first two recipients were Sweeney’s coworkers, Betty Ann Ong and John Ogonowski. In the last few years, honorees have pulled neighbors from burning buildings and saved people from drowning.

“I want my mom to be remembered,” Sweeney Rossman said. “I never want to stop talking about her, and I don’t want people to forget who she was and the role that she played.”

You can read Schairer’s full story here. 

Dig deeper: 

-Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo on why the Twin Towers were a symbol of America

-Surrounded by water, Logan bolsters protection against runway overruns

-“Two Planes Are Off the Radar,” a podcast episode from “The Big Dig.”