Near Ground Zero, Much Is Changed on 6th Anniversary
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By CARA BUCKLEY
Published: September 12, 2007
For the first time in six years, Sept. 11 fell on a Tuesday, the same day the planes flew into the buildings and changed everything. .
ory at a Time
Yet much was different at the increasingly familiar ceremony in Lower Manhattan, where families of the dead, public officials and visitors gathered to mourn and remember.
Unlike the awful, brilliant day of the attacks, this year’s skies were moody and dark, alternately threatening and delivering rain. The ceremony took place not at ground zero, where construction cranes now rise like tentative fingers of hope, but near its southeastern corner, in Zuccotti Park.
The families began trickling in at 7 a.m., some clutching bouquets of flowers, others holding heart-shaped balloons, eventually filling the park by the hundreds and taking refuge from sporadic drizzle under a sea of dark umbrellas.
And then, as it has for five years before, the remembrance ceremony assumed its recognizable form. At 8:40 a.m., the Brooklyn Youth Chorus took the stage, and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” their voices sounding like angels as mourners held aloft photos of people who, to them, are angels now, too. Afterward, the drummer for the New York Police Department marching band sounded a mournful heartbeat, and then the bagpipers began.
At 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane struck the North Tower, a bell was sounded, as it has for six years now, and the gathered masses bowed their heads.
“On that day, we felt isolated, but not for long, and not from each other,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said. “New Yorkers rushed to the site, not knowing which place was safe or if there was more danger ahead. They weren’t sure of anything except that they had to be here. Six years have passed, and our place is still by your side.” In Washington, unlike previous anniversaries of the attack, President Bush spent the day in the city after attending a service at St. John’s Episcopal Church and holding a moment of silence on the South Lawn of the White House.
Not far away, a ceremony was held at the Pentagon, where 184 people died when an American Airlines flight crashed into the sprawling building.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, laid a wreath at the spot where the airplane struck.
General Pace, in his full Marine Corps dress uniform, told the victims’ families that their loved ones would be remembered.
“I do not know the proper words to tell you what is in my heart, what is in our hearts, what your fellow citizens are thinking today,” he said. “We certainly hope that somehow these observances will help lessen your pain.”
In Shanksville, Pa., the ceremony to honor the victims of United Flight 93 was intentionally smaller and more intimate on this sixth anniversary, but no less emotional for the families of the victims and visitors who came to take part and observe.
“I thought it would feel different” with a smaller crowd, said Tanja Root, 36, of Cedar Grove, N.J., whose husband’s aunt, Lorraine Bay, was a flight attendant who died on Flight 93. “But it’s the same feelings, and just as hard.”
With a crowd of perhaps 400 visitors and just two main political dignitaries,- Gov. Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania and the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, the ceremony was in sharp contrast to last year’s longer and larger gathering that included a visit from President Bush.
Mr. Chertoff observed: “Some people ask the question: Do we have 9/11 fatigue? Has the time come to move on? I will tell you that as long as I draw a breath, I will not move on and neither will the 280,000 people in my department.”
Mr. Rendell, spoke of the need to complete a permanent memorial on this site about 80 miles east of Pittsburgh, before living memories fade.
Families of the crash victims have estimated that such a memorial would cost about $57 million and have said that only about $30 million of the public’s contribution has been raised.
Rain began falling as the modest ceremony began at about 9:45 am Eastern time. Many participants stood under umbrellas in this rural countryside as the speakers gave their addresses and the name of the victims were recited.
After Mayor Bloomberg spoke in Lower Manhattan, 236 emergency workers from an array of city agencies and religious entities, read, in alphabetical order, the names of the day’s 2,750 victims at the World Trade Center.
At 10 a.m. after a moment of silence to mark the collapse of the South Tower, Rudolph W. Giuliani made a brief statement. The presence of the former mayor, who is running for president, had stirred controversy from those not wanting to politicize these ceremonies, although he has attended every year.
“On this day six years ago and on the days that followed in the midst of our great grief and turmoil, we also witnessed uncompromising strength and resilience as a people,” Mr. Giuliani said. “It was a day with no answers, but with an unending line of those who came forward to try to help one another.
Mr. Giuliani added: “Elie Wiesel wrote this about the blackest night a human being can know: ‘I have learned two lessons in my life. First, there are no significant literary, psychological or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope too can be given to one only by other human beings.”‘
Several witnesses at the ceremony described a confrontation between a man and Mr. Giuliani, with Sara Kugler of The Associated Press reported that a young man and a woman from the line of family members began yelling and pushing and trying to get near Mr. Giuliani.
The woman with that man, Sabrina Rivera, said she was there mourning her ex-boyfriend’s father, Lt. Robert F. Wallace of the Fire Department. "Because of Giuliani we never had closure," Ms. Rivera said. "We never had closure because as soon as 9/11 happened he had all the remains shipped to Staten Island, in the dump, in the landfill. And we never had closure because of him."
After the outburst, Ms. Rivera and the man who yelled at Mr. Giuliani they were asked to keep walking and to leave the area.
Construction at ground zero was stilled for the day, but the roar of an awakening Manhattan filled the air. Cars crept along West Street, sirens yelped, and workers in nearby office buildings peered down from windows at the proceedings, and then retreated back to work.
And huddled under their umbrellas, shifting awkwardly because there were no seats, the relatives held up the photos of their perished loved ones, visceral reminders of the day they may hate to remember but cannot bear to forget.
“All those amazing incredible people who became victims that day. Please know your loved ones along with your loved ones’ families and friends are remembered in our prayers,” said one woman, after reading off the names of a dozen victims.
“Please know that we will never forget.”
Though Manhattan was shrouded in fog, its skyline obscured from the New Jersey shoreline, about 100 people gathered on the cliffs in West Orange, where hundreds had watched horror unfold six years before.
In the days and months that followed the attacks, the site, at the Eagle Rock Reservation, became almost sacred, as people flocked there to pray and reflect, and mourn all that was lost in the hole punched into Manhattan’s skyline. Around the first-year anniversary of the attacks, Essex County officials constructed a formal monument, with the names of the day’s victims etched on stone tables behind a cluster of statues — a young girl holding a teddy bear, a firefighter’s helmet, a patrolman’s cap, an eagle.
In brief remarks to the crowd gathered there today, Don Robertson Sr. recalled the daily routine of his son, Donald Robertson Jr. His son worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, was 35 and a father of four when he died in the North Tower.
“On 9/11/01, he went to work that day and never came home,” Mr. Robertson said. In the lapel of his dark blazer, he wore a button with a photograph of his son wearing a football uniform from Columbia High School.
Mr. Robertson, who said that he hoped he represented the families of the 49 other Essex County residents who died in the attacks — in all, more than 700 New Jersey residents were killed — added that the site had a particular significance because his family had not been given any remains or personal effects of his son.
“Eagle Rock,” he said, “is really our cemetery.”
It was a day when frayed, well-worn emotions became raw once again. In Albertson, on Long Island, a town councilman’s voice broke as he read the name of a victim, Michael John Cahill, whose son had attended kindergarten with his daughter.
“For a kindergartner to realize,” the councilman, Thomas K. Dwyer, continued, his voice catching again, “what was going on.”
