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‘Again today, we are a nation that mourns’
Frank Davies
Knight Ridder Newspapers
NEW YORK–One year later, tears fell where the towers stood. Silence reigned where the awful roar of destruction had shocked the world. One by one, roses marked the lives snuffed out, and dreadful memories surged back with the turn of a calendar's page.
Wednesday's first anniversary of the terrorist assault of Sept. 11, 2001, brought thousands of relatives of the 2,801 people killed in the attack on the World Trade Center back to what is universally known as Ground Zero.
A simple ceremony marked by music and the words of Lincoln and Jefferson mirrored the deadly chronology of a year ago: a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., when the first hijacked airliner hit the north tower, and a pause at 9:04 for the second plane. Bells tolled at 9:59 and 10:29, when the towers collapsed.
“Again today, we are a nation that mourns,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg to begin the commemoration.
“Again today, we take into our hearts and minds those who perished on this site one year ago and also those who came to toil in the rubble to bring order out of chaos and those who, throughout these 12 months, have struggled to help us make sense of our despair.”
Throughout the day, in concerts and services in all five boroughs, a city tried to find the right words to honor those who gave “the last full measure of devotion,” as Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address, a speech recited by New York Gov. George Pataki.
The most eloquent words spoken at Ground Zero on a warm, windswept morning were the names of those who died–2,801 irreplaceable human beings.
The magnitude of the loss was measured in the two hours and a few minutes it took 197 readers, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and actor Robert DeNiro and many family members, to read them all.
“Gordon M. Aamoth Jr.,” began former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who helped keep the city together a year ago. The name of Aamoth, a 32-year-old investment banker, echoed through the 16-acre cavern while Yo-Yo Ma played Bach's mournful C minor cello suite.
As the alphabetized litany of the dead continued, a flood tide of mourners descended into the seven-story-deep pit, leaving roses, photos and other mementos in a memorial circle where 1.8 million tons of debris had been removed.
They hugged each other for support as the high winds whipped up the dust on hallowed ground. For some, it was an almost unbearable journey.
“It's very hard to be here, but I couldn't stay away,” said Debra Jeffers of Troy, N.Y., part of a large contingent honoring her brother-in-law, William Raub, a 38-year-old bond trader.
The one-year trajectory of grief was different for each family.
Richard Rieb said his daughter Deborah was “on the right track, moving ahead” after the death of her husband, David Garcia, a 40-year-old broker. Then last week a detective came to their Long Island home to say some remains of Garcia had been identified through a DNA match.
“It was like opening up an old wound, and brought everything back,” Rieb said. “My daughter only decided last night to come. It's been very hard.”
Liza Murphy's tears turned to laughter as she recalled her brother, Charlie Murphy, “a broker who was a suburban Jersey guy, loved a good time, sitting on the Jersey shore watching a sunset with a cold beer. That's what I will remember.”
Her brother, 38, was one of 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who lost their lives in the attack. His name was read by Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Some family members chose not to come, said Father James Burke, who counsels them in Bergen County, N.J.
“People work through the pain in different ways,” he said. “Some want to deal with it privately.”
For a city that has endured so much, the anniversary brought a measure of relief for some but also meant reliving the horrors of that day all over again.
“A friend who barely escaped the towers is just a wreck,” said Marcia Aronson, who teaches high school at the Bronx and attended a candlelight vigil in Washington Square. “I've seen a lot of depression.”
The day's commemoration began at 1 a.m., when bagpipe and drum corps units marched to Ground Zero from the farthest reaches of each borough, across the Brooklyn Bridge, past the Bronx Zoo, down Broadway and riding the Staten Island ferry.
In Times Square, New Yorkers and tourists stopped to watch the Ground Zero ceremony on huge screens. Firefighters read the list of their dead–343 that day–in their firehouses.
At 5:15 p.m., President Bush and his wife walked hand in hand down the ramp at Ground Zero, laid a wreath and then greeted and hugged hundreds of victims' relatives.
For many, the city functioned much as usual Wednesday. Most offices and schools were open. Trading on Wall Street started two hours late. The heightened state of alert nationwide did not faze city residents–they have been in that state for months.
And the grim work continued in 16 refrigerated trailers on East 30th Street, as the city medical examiner's staff labors to identify 19,000 human remains, many of them tiny bone fragments.
This week the staff announced a milestone: the number of victims verified by remains reached 1,401–half of those killed.
The city is still adding and subtracting names, and revised the official total to 2,801 when several “missing” people were found alive in other countries.
Beyond the public events, small displays of spontaneity and private moments played out all over the city. Around the corner from Ground Zero, a Chilean businessman signed his condolences on a large poster on the wrought-iron fence of St. Paul's Chapel.
“My God, how could people do such a thing?” Javier Ojeda said in Spanish, gesturing toward the vast, empty pit.
Nearby, John Healy broke down as he left a bouquet on the same fence. A native New Yorker, he said he could not bring himself to the site for months. Then his grief abruptly turned to anger as he saw so many dozens of tourists and vendors.
“This has become a damn flea market,” he said. “I mean, people are selling cotton candy where families are crying.”
Many New Yorkers and visitors aren't waiting for formal memorials. Makeshift tributes still crop up on street corners, from posters and flags to poems and thousands of paper cranes left by Japanese tourists.
And if no one in New York gave a formal speech to mark the anniversary, New Yorkers chose their own words.
On a faded poster near Washington Square, a child had drawn a red fire helmet with the FDNY insignia. Someone wrote, “Mark, We will always love you,” and added the lyrics from Bruce Springsteen's “Into the Fire:”
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