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GayPASG, Atlantic City, September
11, 2006 -- I attended a special Memorial Remembrance for Victims of
September 11, 2001, today and was reminded that I was at a conference here five
years ago when Rich called me from his office in Manhattan and told me an
airplane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center Buildings.
We were here Thursday to Saturday for the Democratic Annual Conference. I
spent one night at home in Edison and returned for the IAOHRA Conference which
lasts to Friday. John C. Campbell
Nation Marks Lives
Lost and
Hopeful Signs of
Healing
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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
The
“Tribute in Light,” seen behind the ground zero construction area,
aimed two beams skyward. |
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN,
NYTimes on the Web, September 12, 2006
Once more the leaden bells tolled in
mourning, loved ones recited the names of the dead at ground zero, and a wounded
but resilient America paused yesterday to remember the calamitous day when
terrorist explosions rumbled like summer thunder and people fell from the sky.
On the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, as most Americans went about
their Monday routines, thousands gathered at ground zero, at the Pentagon and in
a field in Pennsylvania where the hijacked jetliners crashed. They
included families and friends of the 2,973 people who died, President Bush and
other public officials, and countless strangers united by haunting but receding
memories.
At the pit in Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center stood, they
commemorated the day with familiar rituals: moments of silence to mark the
times when the planes struck and the towers collapsed, wreath-layings, prayers,
the music and poetry of loss and remembrance. All were freighted with
emotions that still cut deeply but were showing signs of healing.
“How much do I love you?” Susan Sliwak, a mother of three, intoned at a
microphone on a platform above the grieving crowd, quoting from an Irving Berlin
lyric in tribute to her husband, Robert Sliwak, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee and
one of the 2,749 killed at the trade center. “How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?”
As a bass viol, a flute and other instruments softly rendered the Pachelbel
Canon, Albinoni’s Adagio and other solemn strains, about 200 spouses, partners
and other loved ones took turns reading the names of the dead. Many spoke
directly to their lost partners, often in firm, proud voices. Others told
tearfully of the births of grandchildren or of having reaffirmed their marriage
vows. Many simply expressed their love and that of their children, a
promise never to forget.
Under shafts of golden sunlight, many family members knelt in the pit to pray.
They hugged one another, cried softly or sobbed and set wreaths and roses adrift
in reflecting pools that stand in the stead of the fallen towers. The
waters were soon thick with flowers.
But if there was a theme to this year’s proceedings, it was honoring the dead
while moving on with life. “For all Americans, this date will be forever
entwined with sadness,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in closing remarks
during the noon hour. “But the memory of those we lost can burn with a
softening brightness.”
Moments later, musicians of the New York Police and Fire Departments played
taps, the slow, hauntingly beautiful solemnity that closes the military day.
Yesterday actually closed with another tradition: the “Tribute in Light,”
two powerful beams that shot skyward, creating silhouettes of the fallen towers.
It was a sumptuously cool day in the 60’s, a grand portal to autumn, and Lower
Manhattan was a dramatic backdrop. One had to imagine the architecture to
come on the gouged ground: angular skyscrapers to go with memorial pools.
Still, the surroundings were vivid: the magical skyline rising in
geometric patterns, the seas of fluttering American flags, the Hudson flickering
mercurially in the sunlight, and in the distance seagulls dipping and soaring
like strokes on a musical composition.
President Bush did not attend the ceremonies at ground zero, where he and his
wife, Laura, laid a wreath on Sunday. Instead, he joined 100 police
officers and firefighters for breakfast at a firehouse on the Lower East Side to
honor first responders who rushed to the towers to save lives but lost their
own. As bells tolled, Mr. Bush bowed his head in silence to mark the times
when the planes hit the towers.
Later, he went to Pennsylvania and shared handshakes and hugs in a cold rain
with families of 40 who died in the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 and who,
the authorities believe, spared the White House or the Capitol from destruction
by rising up against the hijackers. In Northern Virginia, Mr. and Mrs.
Bush laid a wreath against the Pentagon wall that was hit by American Airlines
Flight 77, killing 184 people.
For the first anniversary since 2002, the president visited all three places
where lives were lost on 9/11, and he did so without making a speech until his
evening address to the nation from the Oval Office.
The commemoration at ground zero was only one of many solemn remembrances across
the country. In houses of worship, firehouses and police stations, in
parks and public buildings in scores of cities, there were vigils, forums,
interfaith services, concerts, exhibits and events that ranged from flying kites
to floating lanterns. Millions watched the ceremonies on television and
talked about where they were and what they were doing when the planes struck,
and about how their lives had changed.
There were commemorations elsewhere in New York, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St.
Paul’s Chapel near ground zero and in the rotunda of State Supreme Court in
Manhattan. Concerts, masses, exhibits, memorial unveilings and other events were
held in many suburbs: in Hempstead and Mineola and Nyack, N.Y.; in
Hartford; and in Trenton, Bayonne, Middletown, Newark, Holmdel and other places
in New Jersey, a state that was home to 700 of those who died at the trade
center.
But behind the ceremonial day, the rhythms of life in America went on.
There were jobs to do, classes to attend, soccer games, weddings, births, deaths
and appointments. The armies of commerce, homemakers and civil servants
went about their business, not quite as usual, perhaps, but with an awareness
that 9/11, a date burned into the national psyche, had edged away from
catastrophe toward the realm of tragic history. It was an occasion for
solemnity but no longer a wrenching heartbreak.
Aside from discussions of the day’s meaning, it was an ordinary day at most
schools. At airports, bus and train stations and other transportation
hubs, it was another day of security and travel, although Pennsylvania Station
in Manhattan was evacuated briefly in the morning for a suspicious package that
turned out to be nothing threatening.
Memories were still raw at firehouses, like one at Amsterdam Avenue and 66th
Street, where Engine 40 and Ladder 35 lost 11 men five years ago. “We live
with that every day,” Capt. John Miles said. “This day is just for the
remembrance of those that were lost.” But at 8:42 a.m., minutes before the
first moment of silence, a fire alarm rang in and firefighters rushed to their
trucks.
At the New York Stock Exchange, work stopped to observe silences, an eerie
effect on the normally raucous trading floor. On a New York Waterway ferry
crossing to Jersey City, Capt. Kirk Slater, who had taken people to work who
never came back on Sept. 11, halted his engines for a moment and drifted on a
silent river. A subway train halted at the same moment near 96th Street on
the Upper West Side. In Central Park, people strolled, played ball and
spread out on lawns as if spending the day in an impressionist painting.
Life and death went on. At the Owens Funeral Home in Harlem, a service was
held for Clyde Griffin Jr., an 80-year-old veteran of World War II, who died
last week.
At St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, Emma Paulino-Chindra was born to Ines
Paulino-Chindra, 26, and her husband, Wendell, 31. “It’s a miracle baby,”
the new father said. “We’ll celebrate life today, not death.”
Tony Arroyo Sr. of Lancaster, Pa., who took his son, Tony Jr., to the Winter
Garden of the World Financial Center, marveled at a $50 million renovation and,
out the window, at North Cove Marina on the Hudson River, where boats caked with
debris from the towers had fled. Now, more than 40 watercraft bobbed
jauntily in a spanking breeze, including a gleaming huge catamaran called Best
Revenge.
The anniversary dawned on a nation vastly changed in five years, with wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, renewed fears of nuclear conflagration and security
measures that have altered the ways Americans travel, do business and think
about the world. Despite $250 billion in new security measures for
airports, borders and seaports, most Americans believe another major attack is
inevitable but have accepted searches, delays and inconvenience as the price of
life in an age of terror.
At ground zero, families and friends of the dead began assembling just after 7
a.m., and by 8:30 the clusters had merged into thousands. Some wore
T-shirts bearing images of loved ones. Others carried photos, bouquets of
roses or carnations and the burdens of five years with the void in their lives.
They descended into the pit on a ramp lined with flags and cement blocks
alternately painted red and white.
Bagpipes wailed “The Minstrel Boy,” and violins and flutes added to a mournful
air. Later, Wynton Marsalis gave a trumpet solo. Mayor Bloomberg was
master of ceremonies, and there were readings and remarks by Governors George E.
Pataki of New York and Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey, as well as former Mayor
Rudolph W. Giuliani. In the crowd were many public officials, including
Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer and Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer.
But most in the crowd were people like Marie Paprocki, 50, whose brother, Denis
Lavelle, was on the 94th floor of the North Tower when the plane hit and was
among those never found in the rubble. “It’s important for me to come here
because we couldn’t bury him,” she said. “I can feel close to him here.
I can feel peaceful.”
The recitation of the names of the dead has become a centerpiece of the
ceremonies, performed in past years by public officials, children, parents and
grandparents. Last year sisters and brothers read the names. This
year it was the turn of husbands, wives and companions.
The vast majority were widows, the wives of firefighters and police officers,
financial workers and other trade center employees. It was hard for many,
wives choking with emotion just to speak a husband’s name. Voices quavered
as they invoked the names of their fatherless children and offered endearments,
messages that said, in effect, we love you, miss you and will never forget you.
The recitation of names took more than three hours and, before a silent and rapt
audience, became a kind of narrative, one with a strange literary power.
It conveyed images beyond the deaths of heroes and patriots, quietly and
relentlessly capturing the loss of real husbands and wives, real fathers and
mothers, real children and siblings, and finally touching the heart of the
matter: the shattered loves, the crushed hopes and the poignancy of
ordinary lives.
During the recitation, there were eloquent silences as well: at 8:46 a.m.,
the indelible moment when American Airlines Flight 11 slashed into the north
tower and changed everything; at 9:03, when United Airlines Flight 175 hit the
south tower; at 9:59, when the south tower collapsed, and at 10:28, when the
north tower fell.
As the names of the dead echoed outward like oratorios, thousands milled about
on the surrounding streets, some pensive, some looking upset, others acting as
if they were at a 9/11 street fair. On Liberty Street, someone had draped
a medallion around the neck of a live tropical bird sitting on a fence, steps
away from a recently opened center for ground zero artifacts.
On Church Street, dozens of protesters in black T-shirts paraded with signs and
literature espousing conspiracy theories about the trade center’s destruction.
Someone preached about God. Someone else banged a drum. Parked on
Cedar Street was a bus covered inside and out with names and photographs of the
dead.
By dusk, ragged ranks of clouds had gathered over the region, and the sky became
a vast expanse of mother-of-pearl iridescence.
At 7:12 p.m., sunset in New York, a switch was thrown and two powerful shafts of
illumination — the “Tribute in Light” — shot up from Lower Manhattan, restoring,
for one more anniversary night, the outlines of the twin towers.
Contributing reporting were Dan Barry, Glenn Collins, Sarah
Garland, Kate Hammer, Anemona Hartocollis, Kate Meyer, Michelle O’Donnell and
Matthew Sweeney in New York, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg in Washington.
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