I stood amidst the rubble of the World Trade Center, passing buckets of debris along a line of volunteers and first responders.

It was hours after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A small white object protruding from the gray ash drew my attention.

Scuffed and dirty, it was unmistakably a golf ball.

And at that moment, it embodied an incomprehensible loss that would take years, if ever, to process.

An individual whose name I cannot recall, and whom I most probably never knew, urged me not to discard it.

We grasped the significance of discovering something personal amidst the acres of pulverized concrete and twisted steel.

I placed it beside a mound of shredded metal believed to be fragments of the planes that had been flown into the two towers.

People worked tirelessly through those first chaotic hours, frantically digging through what became known as “the pile” for any signs of life.

We stood side by side with fellow New Yorkers, digging, doing whatever we felt would help, occasionally stopping as shouts for silence pierced the whir of activity.

Early optimism quickly gave way to despair.

So little was recognizable that it came as a gut punch when you came across something suggesting an individual had worked here: a torn photo, a paperweight, a shoe.

Each artifact that surfaced told a never-discoverable story about someone gone.

Each object, no matter how anodyne, had become a piece of American history.

To me, an avid golfer at the time, that golf ball hit especially hard.

I pictured it with other balls in a jar on a desk, each stamped with a different corporate logo.

This ball stood for a moment I liked to believe brought someone a modicum of joy — a closed deal, inclusion in a fun scramble, maybe that one shot that kept the person thinking that breaking 90 was possible.

For duffers, golf is a largely exasperating pursuit.

Yet it also encompasses aspiration, companionship and camaraderie.

Those were precisely the things that, in those days, were desperately needed.

And that is why discovering a ball amidst the smoldering debris still reverberates 25 years later.

Howie Rumberg was the first reporter’s reporter to arrive on the scene at the World Trade Center in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States.

For additional American objects, click here.

For further stories on the anniversary, click here.