Amidst the detritus of the World Trade Center, I stood, passing buckets of debris along a human chain of volunteers and first responders.

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

A diminutive white object, protruding from the gray ash, arrested my attention.

Battered and begrimed, it was indubitably a golf ball.

And in that instant, it came to embody a bereavement so unfathomable that its reckoning would demand years—if, indeed, it were ever to be reckoned with at all.

An individual whose name eludes my recollection—and whom, in all likelihood, I never knew—exhorted me not to discard it.

We comprehended the import of unearthing something personal amidst acres of pulverized concrete and twisted steel.

I placed it beside a mound of shredded metal presumed to constitute fragments of the aircraft that had been flown into the two towers.

Through those inaugural, chaotic hours, people toiled indefatigably, frantically excavating what came to be known as “the pile” in search of any vestige of life.

We stood shoulder to shoulder with fellow New Yorkers, digging, doing whatever we believed might avail, intermittently halting as cries for silence rent the whir of activity.

Early optimism swiftly yielded to despair.

So scant was the residue of recognition that encountering any trace intimating that an individual had once laboured here—a photograph, torn; a paperweight; a shoe—landed as a visceral blow.

Every artifact that surfaced disclosed a story forever beyond recovery, concerning someone departed.

Every object, however anodyne, had been transmuted into a fragment of American history.

To me, an avid golfer at the time, the golf ball struck with particular poignancy.

I envisioned it nestled among others in a jar upon a desk, each bearing the imprint of a different corporate insignia.

This ball encapsulated a moment I liked to believe had conferred upon someone a modicum of joy — a consummated deal, inclusion in an agreeable scramble, perhaps that singular shot that sustained the conviction that breaking 90 was attainable.

For the inveterate duffer, golf constitutes a largely exasperating pursuit.

Yet it is equally a matter of aspiration, of friendship, of camaraderie—things that, in those days, were desperately wanting.

And that is precisely why the discovery of a ball amid the smoldering rubble continues to resonate a quarter-century hence.

Howie Rumberg was the consummate reporters’ reporter on the scene at the World Trade Center in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

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

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