More than 50 NHL employees spent Sept. 11 packing meals at the Intrepid Museum in New York, joining a nationwide remembrance effort tied to the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The New York drive helped produce more than 250,000 meals for local food banks.
It was part of a larger push expected to yield 17 million meals for food banks across the United States that week. The scale is part of what has made the annual observance more than a moment of reflection: it has become a day when service is the public act.
That is the idea behind 9/11 Day, founded in 2002 by David Paine and Jay Winuk, whose brother Glenn Winuk died helping others on Sept. 11, 2001. Their aim was to turn the date into a national day of service and remembrance, a goal that became official in 2009 and later grew into a meal-packing event first staged in 2016 for the 15-year anniversary.
By 2017, the effort had expanded beyond New York to places including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix, and it now runs in more than 50 cities. The NHL also offered volunteer opportunities in Toronto and Montreal, showing how the effort has spread across hockey markets as well as beyond them.
That reach sits beside the day’s hard truth. Sept. 11 is remembered through food packed and hands raised to help, but it remains anchored in a terrorist attack that killed and scarred thousands. The volunteer work does not soften that loss; it is built on the wish that something constructive can still be made from it.
David Klatt said the league sees hockey as a team sport and that employees can do more when they do it together. On a day tied to grief and unity alike, the unanswered piece is not whether the effort will continue, but how far the volunteer model can spread as more cities and more workers take part in the years ahead.
