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At night, when the crowds disappear from the 9/11 Memorial, Jim Maroon does something almost no visitor will ever experience. He steps down into the reflecting pools themselves. The same pools that now occupy the exact footprints of the Twin Towers. Jim was 29 years old on September 11, 2001. That morning, he was heading to work at the New York Mercantile Exchange, only a few hundred yards from the World Trade Center, when the first plane struck. He remembers the sound. He looked up and saw the enormous opening in the tower. Later that morning, while making his way away from the area with a coworker, he looked back and watched one of the towers come down. The place was already deeply personal to him. His father had worked around the World Trade Center for much of his adult life, and Jim had spent a large part of his childhood in the area. He also knew brokers who were inside the towers that morning. Years later, Jim returned for a very different reason. Since 2012, he has helped maintain the 9/11 Memorial. Five nights a week, from around 11 p.m. until 6 a.m., he pulls on a rubber wading suit and climbs into one of the giant pools. 🌙 Each pool covers almost an acre. Jim calculated that cleaning just one requires 44 passes with the vacuum in one direction and another 44 back. Most nights he removes leaves from the nearly 400 trees surrounding the memorial. But he also finds coins, children's toys, soda cans and occasionally things visitors accidentally drop into the water. The coins are kept for the memorial. By the time visitors arrive in the morning, Jim is usually already heading home. Most will never know his name. For him, that is fine. The important part is making sure families arrive at a place that feels cared for. “These people lost family here,” he explained. He never wants someone to visit the memorial and feel that the place where their loved one is remembered has been neglected. And despite working there for 14 years, Jim admits he cannot allow himself to think about September 11 every night. “If I thought about it every day, I'd be heartbroken.” Around the anniversary, though, the memories return. Sometimes he looks at the names around the pools and recognizes people he knew. Then he goes back into the water and continues cleaning. Twenty-five years ago, Jim stood nearby as the World Trade Center changed forever. Today, while New York sleeps, he quietly helps take care of the place where those towers once stood. Do you think a job can become a form of remembrance, even when almost nobody ever sees you doing it? #JamesMaroon #September11 #911Memorial #NewYork #Facts