By VITUS OZOKE, PhD

Today marks twenty-five years since the world changed.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists hijacked four passenger planes and turned them into weapons. Two were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Another struck the Pentagon. The fourth, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back. By the time that terrible morning was over, nearly 3,000 innocent people had been killed.

Today, America remembers them. The world remembers them. And I remember one of them personally. His name was Godwin Ajala, and he was my friend.

And twenty-five years later, I want to remember not just that Godwin died because of September 11. I want to remember the extraordinary way he chose to live on September 11.

Godwin was 33 years old and Nigerian. He had trained as a lawyer before immigrating to the United States in 1995, carrying the familiar immigrant bundle of ambition, sacrifice, and hope. His wife and three young children remained in Nigeria while he tried to establish himself in America.

The life he found in New York was far removed from the professional life he had known as a lawyer. Godwin worked as a security officer at the World Trade Center for Summit Security Services while studying to qualify for the New York Bar.

There is something profoundly dignified about that part of his story. Here was a lawyer working as a security guard. There was no shame in it. There was a family to support. There was a dream to pursue. There was tomorrow.

Godwin worked long hours and then returned home to study for the Bar exam, sometimes for another six to eight hours. He wanted to reclaim his profession and build a life in America. Above all, he wanted to reunite his family under one roof. His dream was not merely to become a New York lawyer. It was to become Daddy at home again.

Then came Tuesday, September 11, 2001. This is the part of Godwin's story that has stayed with me for twenty-five years.

As I remember that morning, Godwin was off duty when the attacks began. He was not trapped inside the World Trade Center when the first airplane struck. He did not suddenly realize that history had come looking for him. He was away from the danger. Then he saw what was unfolding on television.

Like millions of people, he watched smoke pour from the World Trade Center. He saw confusion turn into catastrophe. He understood that the place where he worked had become the scene of an unimaginable emergency.

Most people would have stayed where they were. No one could reasonably have blamed an off-duty security officer for staying away from a building that had just been struck by an airliner. Godwin did something else. He got dressed and went to work. Not because the World Trade Center was safe, but precisely because it wasn't. People needed help. That decision, for me, is where the story of Godwin Ajala becomes something larger than the story of another victim of September 11.

Some people become heroes because danger finds them. And there are those exceedingly rare human beings who are already beyond danger's reach, see others in peril, and make the conscious decision to go toward it. Godwin went toward it.

Think about New York City that morning. People were running. People were screaming. People were covered in dust and blood. Police officers were rushing downtown. Firefighters were climbing staircases, carrying equipment, as terrified office workers descended past them. Ambulances were converging on Lower Manhattan. And thousands upon thousands of people were desperately trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the World Trade Center.

The human tide was flowing away from the Twin Towers. Godwin joined those moving in the opposite direction. While others were running out, my friend was going in. When Godwin arrived, he didn't just put on a uniform and stand around waiting to be told what to do. He helped people escape.

The surviving accounts place him assisting with the evacuation around the lobby of the South Tower, World Trade Center 2. Witnesses recall him helping people toward safety. One account describes him outside the lobby, holding a door open so people could escape, even as debris fell around him. What an extraordinary image to leave behind.

Godwin Ajala stood at a door, holding it open so other people could live. A door. Something so ordinary. But on September 11, 2001, holding that door became an act of extraordinary courage. People passed through it toward life. Godwin remained beside it, exposed to danger.

And Godwin was no small man. He stood about seven feet tall – a giant with a commanding frame. On an ordinary day, his sheer physical presence would have made him hard to miss. But on that extraordinary morning, Godwin turned his enormous strength into something far greater than size. He offered the strength of his huge frame to the weak, the frightened, the injured, and the vulnerable. The hands that could have pushed through the crowd toward safety instead held a door open for others. The powerful body that could have carried him away from danger stayed to help others escape. In the end, perhaps that is the most fitting image of my friend: a giant of a man using his strength not to save himself, but to give others a chance to live.

At some point, the man who had been helping others escape was himself struck down. Godwin was found unconscious and taken to a hospital, where he never regained consciousness. He remained in a coma for four days. On September 15, 2001, Godwin O. Ajala died from the injuries he sustained in the September 11 catastrophe. He was only 33 years old.

A wife lost her husband. Three young children lost their father. Nigeria lost a son. America lost an immigrant who, in one of the darkest hours in its history, had answered America's distress call.

And I lost a friend.

Godwin's story has another painful dimension. September was usually when he traveled home to Nigeria. His wife was waiting for him there, and his children were waiting to see their father.

Imagine those children. Daddy had gone to America to build a better future for them. Daddy was studying to become a lawyer again. Daddy was working. Daddy was coming home. Except this time, Daddy never came home.

That is the part of every heroic story that we sometimes neglect. We celebrate the courage. The family lives with the empty chair. We speak of sacrifice. The children grow up without their father. We engrave the hero's name in stone. The widow remembers the sound of his voice.

Today, I do not want the heroism of Godwin Ajala to obscure the terrible price heroism exacted from those who loved him. Godwin should have lived. He should have passed the New York Bar. He should have practiced law again. He should have reunited his family. He should have watched his children grow up. He should have grown older. He should have complained about gray hair. He should have attended graduations and weddings. He should have become a grandfather.

He should be here. But because he isn't, those of us who remember him have a responsibility to ensure that September 11 does not reduce him to a statistic. Nearly 3,000 people died. That number is important. But numbers do something terrible to human beings. They make individuals disappear.

So today, allow me to pull one man out of that number. His name was Godwin O. Ajala. He was 33. He was Nigerian. He was a lawyer. He was an immigrant. He was a security officer. He was a husband. He was the father of three children. He was pursuing the American dream. And he was my friend.

Official Port Authority records later named Godwin among eleven Summit Security personnel nominated for the September 11 Award for Acts of Valor. The language of that record is haunting. These men held their posts and lost their lives while assisting emergency workers and civilians. Some, according to the Port Authority, responded while off duty to aid in the rescue and evacuation. Eleven names. Among them, Godwin Ajala – Building 5 Concourse.

That official document calls what they did an "Act of Valor." I call what Godwin did something else: a choice. That's what makes his story so powerful to me.

At some point on the morning of September 11, there was a moment before the heroism. A moment before the rescue. A moment before the door. A moment before the injury. A moment before the hospital. A moment before death.

There was only Godwin and a decision. He could go. Or he could stay. My friend saw other people in trouble and decided, "I am going." Perhaps that is the true measure of courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is not necessarily rushing into danger without understanding the consequences. Sometimes courage means understanding perfectly well that something is dangerous and deciding that someone else's life matters enough to go anyway.

Godwin went.

And there is something particularly beautiful about the fact that this man was an immigrant. He had come to America in search of opportunity. He came hoping America would give him the chance to practice his profession, provide for his family, and build a better life.

But on the morning when America desperately needed something from him, Godwin did not ask what America had yet done for him. He gave America everything he had, including his strength, his courage, his compassion, and ultimately, his life. That is why I resist remembering Godwin merely as a Nigerian hero.

Nigeria can proudly claim him. America can gratefully claim him. But what Godwin did belongs to something larger than nationality. It belongs to humanity. The people he helped that morning did not have to be Nigerians or Africans. They did not have to know him.

He did not stop frightened strangers at the door to ask where they came from, what religion they practiced, what political party they belonged to, what language they spoke, or whether they deserved his help. He did not ask for their papers. They were human beings. They were in danger. And that was enough.

Twenty-five years later, Godwin's name is permanently inscribed at the National September 11 Memorial in New York: GODWIN O. AJALA – Panel S-65.

Today, thousands of people will visit that sacred ground. Some will run their fingers along the names. Some will leave flowers. Some will pray. Some will cry. Some will stand before Godwin's name without knowing anything about the man behind those letters. But I know something about him. I knew him. He was my friend.

So, on this 25th anniversary, I want to do something stone cannot do. I want to tell his story. I want people who encounter the name GODWIN O. AJALA to know that there was once a young Nigerian man behind it who dreamed enormous dreams. A man who loved his family. A lawyer willing to work as a security guard while fighting his way back into his profession. A father who endured separation from his children because he believed tomorrow could be better than today. A man who was only 33. And a man who, on one terrible morning when human beings were running for their lives, made an extraordinary choice. He went to help.

Godwin, twenty-five years have passed. The Twin Towers are gone. A new generation has been born that knows September 11 only through photographs, documentaries, and history books. New York has been rebuilt. America has moved forward. The world has changed. But friendship has its own calendar. There are people whom death takes from us without ever quite making them past tense.

Today, while America remembers September 11, I remember you. I remember the Nigerian. I remember the lawyer. I remember the immigrant. I remember the husband. I remember the father. I remember the dreamer. I remember the worker who knew that honest labor diminishes no man. I remember the man who was building a future. But above all, I remember my friend, who saw people in danger and went toward them.

You never had the opportunity to stand before the New York Bar as you dreamed. But on September 11, 2001, you stood before a far greater tribunal: the tribunal of human character. When your moment came, you passed. You passed the test of courage. You passed the test of compassion. You passed the test of sacrifice. You passed the test of our common humanity.

The terrorists destroyed buildings that morning. Those bastards took thousands of innocent lives. They left children without parents, spouses without partners, and families with wounds that twenty-five years cannot erase. But they could not destroy one thing. They could not touch the instinct of good human beings to help one another.

And on September 11, 2001, that instinct had a name: Godwin O. Ajala. My friend. A son of Nigeria. An American hero. A hero of humanity. You were only 33. You should have had so much more life. Yet in the life you had, especially in those final hours when history asked the most difficult question imaginable of you, you gave an answer worthy of remembrance.

And so today, twenty-five years later, I speak your name again: GODWIN O. AJALA. While others ran out, you went in. While others desperately sought safety, you went to help strangers find it. And while terrorism showed us some of the very worst human beings are capable of, you showed us some of the very best.

May your children forever walk proudly in the knowledge of the man their father was. May the village of Ihenta, Akaeze, in Ebonyi State, Nigeria, forever remember her son. May America forever remember the immigrant who answered her call on one of her darkest mornings. And may history never forget your name: Godwin O. Ajala, June 9, 1968 – September 15, 2001

Twenty-five years later: I remember. We remember. We will never forget.

Rest in eternal peace, my friend.

•Dr. Vitus Ozoke is a lawyer, human rights activist, and public affairs analyst based in the United States.