9/11 day of service, to honor a brother

Carmel, New York (CNN) -- Last week in New York, on the day that would have been my late brother Glenn's 50th birthday, my wife, Carolyn, and I were among those September 11 family members privileged to receive an opportunity to personally thank President Obama for bringing to justice the man who brutally killed Glenn and almost 3,000 others nearly 10 years ago.

That's a sentence I never could have imagined writing in my pre-9/11 life. But the world is a different place from what most of us expected it to be. Maybe, I hope, it is now a bit safer than it was the week before bin Laden was killed.

Lessons can be learned from September 11, but they're not only about safety and danger and destruction. They're about making the world a kinder, more caring place. My brother Glenn was an attorney, volunteer firefighter and EMT who lived and died in service to others. He ran from a position of safety that morning to save the lives of strangers. That kind of behavior is an inspiration.