Fewer 9/11 families on hand for 11th anniversary

JENNIFER PELTZ

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — Amer­i­cans marked the 11th anniver­sary of the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror attacks Tues­day in famil­iar but sub­dued cer­e­monies that put griev­ing fam­i­lies ahead of politi­cians and sug­gested it’s time to move on after a decade of remembrance.

As in past years, thou­sands gath­ered at the World Trade Cen­ter site in New York, the Pen­ta­gon and Shanksville, Pa., to read the names of nearly 3,000 vic­tims killed in the worst ter­ror attack in U.S. history.

But many felt that last year’s 10th anniver­sary was an emo­tional turn­ing point for pub­lic mourn­ing of the attacks. For the first time, elected offi­cials weren’t speak­ing at the cer­e­mony, which often allowed them a solemn turn in the spot­light, but raised ques­tions about the pub­lic and pri­vate Sept. 11. Fewer fam­i­lies attended the cer­e­monies this year, and some cities can­celed their remem­brances altogether.

“I feel much more relaxed” this year, said Jane Pol­li­cino, who came to ground zero Tues­day morn­ing to mourn her hus­band, who was killed at the trade cen­ter. “After the ninth anniver­sary, that next day, you started build­ing up to the 10th year. This feels a lot dif­fer­ent, in that regard. It’s another anniver­sary that we can com­mem­o­rate in a calmer way, with­out that 10-year pressure.”

As bag­pipes played at the year-old Sept. 11 memo­r­ial in New York, fam­ily clutch­ing bal­loons, flow­ers and pho­tos of their loved ones bowed their heads in silence at 8:46 a.m., the moment that the first hijacked jet­liner crashed into the trade center’s north tower. Bells tolled to mark the moments that planes crashed into the sec­ond tower, the Pen­ta­gon and a Penn­syl­va­nia field, and the moments that each tower collapsed.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama observed the moment in a cer­e­mony on the White House’s south lawn, and then laid a white flo­ral wreath at the Pen­ta­gon, above a con­crete slab that said “Sept. 11, 2001 — 937 am.” He later recalled the hor­ror of the attacks, declar­ing, “Our coun­try is safer and our peo­ple are resilient.”

Vic­tims’ fam­i­lies in New York tear­fully read the names of the attack vic­tims, often look­ing up to the sky to talk to their lost loved ones.”Rick, can you hear your name as the roll is called again? On this sacred ground where your dust set­tled?” said Richard Blood, whose son, Richard Mid­dle­ton Blood, Jr., died in the trade center’s south tower. “If only those who hear your name could know what a lov­ing son and beau­ti­ful per­son you grew to be. I love you, son, and miss you terribly.”

Thou­sands had attended the cer­e­mony in New York in pre­vi­ous years, includ­ing last year’s mile­stone 10th anniver­sary. A crowd of fewer than 200 swelled to about 1,000 by late Tues­day morn­ing, as fam­ily mem­bers laid roses and made paper rub­bings of their loved ones’ names etched onto the Sept. 11 memo­r­ial. A few hun­dred attended cer­e­monies at the Pen­ta­gon and in Pennsylvania.

Com­muters rushed out of the sub­way and fewer police bar­ri­cades were in place than in past years in the lower Man­hat­tan neigh­bor­hood sur­round­ing ground zero. More than 4 mil­lion peo­ple in the past year have vis­ited the memo­r­ial, which became more of a pub­lic space than a closed-off con­struc­tion site.

Fam­i­lies had a mixed reac­tion to the chang­ing cer­e­mony, which kept politi­cians away from the micro­phone in New York for the first time. Charles G. Wolf, whose wife, Kather­ine, was killed at the trade cen­ter, said: “We’ve gone past that deep, col­lec­tive pub­lic grief.” But Pol­li­cino said it’s impor­tant that politi­cians still attend the ceremony.

“There’s some­thing miss­ing if they’re not here at all,” she said. “Now, all of a sud­den, it’s ‘for the fam­i­lies.’ This hap­pened to our coun­try — it didn’t hap­pen only to me.”

And Joe Tor­res, who put in 16-hour days in ground zero’s “pit” clean­ing up tons of debris in the days after the attacks said another year has changed noth­ing for him.

“The 11th year, for me, it’s the same as if it hap­pened yes­ter­day,” said Tor­res, whose sister-in-law was killed in the attacks. “It could be 50 years from now, and to me, it’ll be just as impor­tant as year one, or year five or year ten.”

Like 2001, this Sept. 11 was on a Tues­day, for the sec­ond time since the attacks. The early fall weather was much like the morn­ing on 2001.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the gov­er­nors of New York and new Jer­sey and for­mer Mayor Rudy Giu­liani all attended New York’s cer­e­mony. Biden spoke to hun­dreds at the Flight 93 Memo­r­ial in Penn­syl­va­nia, say­ing the cer­e­monies were a reminder that the coun­try hasn’t for­got­ten them.

The Oba­mas planned later to visit wounded sol­diers at Wal­ter Reed Army Med­ical Cen­ter. The U.S. ter­ror attacks were fol­lowed by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. mil­i­tary death toll years ago sur­passed the 9/11 vic­tim count. At least 1,987 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan and 4,475 in Iraq, accord­ing to the Pentagon.

Allied mil­i­tary forces marked the anniver­sary at a short cer­e­mony at NATO’s head­quar­ters in Kabul, Afghanistan with a trib­ute to more than 3,000 for­eign troops killed in the decade-long war.

“Eleven years on from that day there should be no doubt that our ded­i­ca­tion to this com­mit­ment, that com­mit­ment that was seared into our souls that day so long ago, remains strong and unshaken,” said Marine Gen. John Allen, the top com­man­der of U.S. and coali­tion troops.

There was lit­tle pol­i­tics on an election-year anniver­sary, with Obama and Repub­li­can chal­lenger Mitt Rom­ney pulling neg­a­tive ads and avoid­ing cam­paign ral­lies. Rom­ney shook hands with fire­fight­ers in Chicago and was address­ing National Guard mem­bers in Nevada. Most cer­e­monies focused on grief and mem­ory, but there was still a touch of pol­i­tics from the podium.

“We would like to thank Pres­i­dent Obama and (Navy) Seal Team 6 for what they did for this coun­try,” said Angella Whyte, refer­ring to the U.S.-led raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden last year.

Other cer­e­monies were held across the coun­try — from New York’s Long Island, where hun­dreds wrote mes­sages to their loved ones on a memo­r­ial, to Boston, where more than 200 peo­ple with ties to Mass­a­chu­setts were remem­bered. But some cities scaled back — Mid­dle­town, N.J., which lost 37 res­i­dents, held a small, silent cer­e­mony instead of pre­vi­ous events with speeches and music. The New York City sub­urb of Glen Rock, N.J., where 11 peo­ple were killed, did not hold a memo­r­ial this year for the first time.

“It was appro­pri­ate for this year — not that the losses will ever be for­got­ten,” said Brad Jor­dan, chair­man of a Glen Rock com­mu­nity group that helps vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. “But we felt it was right to shift the bal­ance a bit from the obser­vance of loss to a com­mem­o­ra­tion of how the com­mu­nity came together to heal.”

The memo­r­ial foun­da­tion announced this sum­mer that politi­cians wouldn’t be included this year, to sep­a­rate pol­i­tics from the cer­e­mony. But oth­ers said keep­ing elected offi­cials off the ros­trum smacked of … pol­i­tics. And sev­eral said they were unwill­ing to let go.

“Com­ing here, it’s like rip­ping off a Band-Aid,” said Yas­min Leon, whose sis­ter was killed at the trade cen­ter. “You rip it off and the wound is opened again. But you keep com­ing back anyway.”

And at ground zero, fam­ily mem­bers read­ing their loved ones’ names said the pas­sage of time did not change their grief.

“Mark, they say time heals all wounds. It’s not true, Mark,” said Joanne Hindy, whose nephew died in the north tower. “There’s a void in all our lives because this that will never ever be filled or healed.”

Posted by AP News on Sep 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.