A Day That Stands Alone in History

By JAMES BARRON Published: September 11, 2011

Just as Sept. 11 was unthinkable, Sunday was inevitable: the 10th anniversary of a day that stands alone. In history. In memory. Three-thousand six-hundred fifty-two days have now passed. At 8:46 a.m. the time when the first plane slammed into 1 World Trade Center 87,648 hours will have gone by. Another 5,258,880 minutes. Another 315,532,800 seconds. Once more, the families gathered at ground zero, where 2,749 died, and in Washington and in Pennsylvania to pay tribute to the 224 who died there. Once more, there was an outpouring of grief. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that the attacks had turned a perfect blue-sky morning into the blackest of nights." He added, We can never unsee what happened here. President Obama read Psalm 46, which talks about God as our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York read from President Franklin D. Roosevelts 1941 State of the Union address, the famous four freedoms speech freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear anywhere in the world. There were also long moments of silence, first at 8:46 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 struck 1 World Trade Center, and again at 9:03 a.m., when United Airlines Flight 175 smashed into the other tower. Another silence at ground zero and at the Pentagon came at 9:37 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into what had been considered the unshakable nerve center of the worlds most powerful military. There are no words to ease the pain that you still feel, Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta told relatives of the 184 people who died there. Another moment of silence, at 10:03 a.m., marked the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa. the plane on which passengers to fight back, storming the cockpit and attempting to take control of the plane from the terrorists who had hijacked it. There is nothing with which to compare the passenger uprising of 10 years ago, said Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania. It has no companion in history in my mind. He added: Their uprising marks the moment in history when Americans showed what makes us different. We refuse to be victims. We refuse to settle for the term survivor. Captivity will not suit us. The silver bell at ground zero was rung to remember those passengers, as it had been rung through the morning to remember the passengers on the other hijacked airliners and the people inside the twin towers office workers, custodians, people who had been having at breakfast in the restaurant a quarter-mile above the street.

Once more, the names were recited solemnly, but with sometimes with poignant, personal reminiscences. One man was thanked for looking down from heaven and helping the Dallas Cowboys. Another relative mentioned your laughter, your smile and your meatloaf. And Jefferson Crowther stood at the lectern with a red kerchief in his shift pocket alongside the blue ribbons that all the family members wore. The ribbons significance became clear when he got to the last name he read. And my courageous son, Welles Remy Crowther, he said, his voice cracking. The man with the red bandanna. Welles Crowther, a firefighter, had worn a red bandanna on Sept. 11 as he tried to help people escape from the World Trade Center. The 10th anniversary dawned on a city and a nation that has changed immutably, with continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and persistent security worries at home. And no longer is ground zero a scarred reminder of what was, but a symbol of resurgence, with the National September 11 Memorial about to open and a not-yet-finished skyscraper. It now stands 961 feet above the street where thousands fell. This Sept. 11 began with the towers that will take their place of the ones that were destroyed a decade ago illuminated in red, white and blue stripes. What was then the site of the World Trade Center is surrounded by construction fences, and evidence of what happened is everywhere: There are flags on the new Tower One, the Freedom Tower. The subway station nearby has exit sign that identify it as the Rector Street 9/11 Memorial, with the 11 written to look like the twin towers. Ten years ago, it was just another morning a Tuesday, a day when ordinary people did the most ordinary of things: Scrambling to work, hurriedly kissing their families goodbye, running for the train. And then there was the dark gash and the ball of fire high up in one of the buildings, and a few minutes later, a second gash, a second ball of fire and a plume of smoke visible for miles. Things were never going to be the same again, it will be always getting harder, said Charles Mintzer, a now-retired New York State employee. On Sunday, he returned to the place he had watched a decade ago, the promenade overlooking the East River in Brooklyn Heights. So did Marcy Chapin, a retired foundation executive, who had gone there on Sept. 11 and remembered hearing shouting in the streets about New York being under attack. She reached the promenade as the second plane hit. I though, What could be next? The Brooklyn Bridge? she recalled.Sept. 11 put New York, a city that had not faced combat in more than 200 years, on the front lines in a global war on terrorism. Sept. 11 made slogans created by Madison Avenue like If you see something, say something as widespread as Loose lips sink ships once was. One measure of how Sept. 11 changed everything was how little grumbling there was last week as motorists waited to crawl through police checkpoints. Sept. 11 redefined the bridges and tunnels beyond those checkpoints as something that generations of commuters had never imagined: potential targets.

Sept. 11 redefined so much more. Sept. 11 put New York, a city that had not faced combat in more than 200 years, on the front lines in a global war on terrorism. Sept. 11 made slogans created by Madison Avenue like If you see something, say something as widespread as Loose lips sink ships once was. Sept. 11 brought color-coded threat levels (though the Department of Homeland Security, itself a post-Sept. 11 creation, phased them out several months ago). Still travelers worry: Is it safe to fly? Since Sept. 11, airline passengers have had to pull off their shoes and empty their pockets, and they felt embarrassed when they forgot they had a too-big bottle of shampoo or mouthwash in their carry-on. And still there were episodes when terrorists on international flights tried to set off plastic explosives hidden in their shoes or sewn into their underwear. Is it safe to open the mail? A week after the Sept. 11 attacks, letters containing anthrax killed 5 people and infected 17 others. It took the F.B.I. five years to conclude that an Army microbiologist had been responsible. In the confusion at first, people hoarded antibiotics, and officials briefly grounded crop-dusting airplanes. But this anniversary played out against a different backdrop than the first anniversary, in 2002, or the fifth, in 2006. For the first time, Osama bin Laden was dead. Weve taken the fight to Al Qaeda like never before, Mr. Obama declared Saturday in his weekly radio address. For the first time, too, there was tangible progress toward fulfilling the promise to rebuild a promise made in the aftermath of the attacks but delayed by squabbling over architects, plans and finances. Buildings are rising between Church and West Streets in Lower Manhattan, and the National September 11 Memorial will open to the public on Monday. Relatives of those who died at the World Trade Center will get a first look on Sunday. If they were to measure it, they would see that the memorial covers about half of the 16acre World Trade Center site. They will see that the names of the dead have been inscribed on the walls of two reflecting pools that now fill the footprints of the old towers pools that hold 550,000 gallons of water and are lined with 3,968 panels of granite, each weighing 420 pounds. A museum is to open nearby next year. For the memorial and the museum together, the plans called for some 8,151 tons of steel and 49,900 cubic yards of concrete. The size of it all is kind of breathtaking, said Paul Schlenr of Cincinnati, who said his wifes sister, Margaret Seeliger, died in the south tower. Christine Corday, an artist whose husband runs the company that installed the bronze plates with the names, had been at ground zero early on Sunday, polishing the letters that had been etched in. Every name has run under the palm of my hand, she said. Each name here is a life, and thats never been lost on anyone thats worked on this project.

Mary Dwyer of Brooklyn, whose sister, Lucy Fishman, also worked in the south tower, said it was moving to be able to stand, for the first time, near where Ms. Fishman had died. Ive been trying to forget all of this and here its the closest Ill ever get to her again, said Ms. Dwyer, adding that she is 36, the same age as her sister on Sept. 11. Of the waterfalls, Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles, was the pilot on American Airlines Flight 77, said, Some people think of them as tears an idea echoed by Alice M. Greenwald, the director of the museum, as she walked along the pools. The difference for me is seeing people here, Ms. Greenwald said. This is now a place, not a construction site, not a design. Its now a place in New York. She said the difference was transformational.Beyond ground zero, there were other signs of remembrance. The U.S.S. New York, commissioned in 2009 and made with seven-anda-half tons of steel from the twin towers, spent the weekend at anchor in the Hudson River. On Sunday morning, it was to cruise to Lower Manhattan, stopping within sight of the new tower at the trade center site. And the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site, planned a moment of silence for 1 p.m. and issued a statement asking Americans to cease all regular activity for one minute to reflect on the lives lost and those affected by the tragedies of 9/11. Beyond ground zero, there were other reminders. The U.S.S. New York, commissioned in 2009 and made with seven-and-a-half tons of steel from the twin towers, spent the weekend at anchor in the Hudson River. On Sunday morning it was to cruise to Lower Manhattan, stopping within sight of the new tower at the trade center site. Other ceremonies and services were planned. The New York City Fire Museum will honor the 343 firefighters who died with the dedication of the bunker coat and helmet that a Fire Department chaplain, Mychal Judge, was wearing on Sept. 11 when he died. Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan will have a trialogue, a three-way discussion with Shamsi Ali, the imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York; Rabbi Michael S. Friedman, the associate rabbi of Central Synagogue in Manhattan; and Michael B. Brown, the churchs senior minister. At night, an interfaith ceremony on the south side of Pier 40, a park at the west end of Houston Street, will be led by the Rev. Alfonso Wyatt, the vice president of the Fund for the City of New York. The ceremony at ground zero brought together the officials who were in office 10 years ago Mr. Bush, Gov. George E. Pataki of New York, Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco of New Jersey and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani with their successors: Mr. Obama, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Mr. Bloomberg. As at past observances, there will be music. The cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who performed at the one-year anniversary ceremony, played the slow Sarabande movement from Bachs Suite for Cello No. 1. James Taylor sang You Can Close Your Eyes, and Paul Simon sang The Sound of Silence.

And still what happened on that morning seems as impossible as it did in those first few minutes, when one friend called another and said something like, Go turn on the television. A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. Or when, in the seconds before the picture came on, an anchor was heard saying something like, Wait. These are live pictures, not the tape? So that was a different plane, and it hit the other one? Like the day when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, or the day when the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986 or the day when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, Sept. 11 was one of those days that divided things into before and after. New Yorkers still talk about what a bright morning that was, after a thunder-andlightning show in the sky the night before. They talk about how late-summer days are forever different. They talk about how the foreboding that has replaced the promise in the pink of the sunrise and so much joy in the deep blue of the midmorning sky. And they talk about what the World Trade Center was, a city-within-the-city that dominated the skyline. Below 14th Street, it was a direction-finder as sure as the N on any compass. It had been bombed in 1993. The damage had been repaired, but the two buildings remained a target for Al Qaeda. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: September 11, 2011 An earlier version of this article contained a punctuation error. The plans for the memorial and museum at ground zero called for 8,151 tons of steel, not 8.151.