Solemn Ceremonies Mark 9/11
Posted September 11, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
On a cool and blue-skied September day not unlike the one exactly five years ago, New York City held its solemn remembrance of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks – events that forever changed the world.
Nearly 3,000 lives were lost when terrorists hijacked passenger planes and flew them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan and the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. A fourth plane crashed in Shanksville, Pa. after the passengers stormed the cockpit to overthrow the terrorists.
Four moments of silence were marked at 8:46, 9:03, 9:59, and 10:29am – the times when the jetliners struck each of the trade center buildings and when each tower fell. Officials rang a bell to signify each one.
Family members travelled to the 16-acre New York site where the center once stood, clutching bouquets of flowers and bearing photos of their lost loved ones.
Among the relatives mourning there were Canadian widows Cindy Barkway and Maureen Basnicki, who lost their husbands David Barkway and Ken Basnicki in the attacks. Standing side by side, they assisted in reading out the names of the 2,749 people who died at the trade center at a memorial service.
Members of Basnicki’s family were also in attendance at a memorial at the Toronto Board of Trade. Basnicki’s mother Jean received a call from her son just moments before his death.
“He said, ‘I’m on the 105th floor at the World Trade Center. We’ve been hit.’ And then he said, ‘There’s a lot of smoke here. I don’t know how we’re going to get down,'” Jean Basnicki recalled.
Ken Basnicki’s son Brennan also attended the Toronto memorial, and said he felt, “disbelief, uncertainty, not knowing what to think” when he heard about what had happened to his dad.
There were also about 90 police officers from Toronto joining New York City police officers for the memorial events – the only force from outside Manhattan to attend. The Toronto service reportedly made a pledge to send at least one of its officers every year on September 11.
Tommy King, a New York City firefighter, stood by a fire truck printed with the names of two lost comrades.
“It’s just weird being back here,” King said outside the World Financial Center. “This building here was a morgue.”
U.S. President George W. Bush visited ground zero Sunday with his wife Laura – they laid wreaths in two reflecting pools in the pit of the trade center site where the north and south towers stood. On Monday Bush was to visit the two other attack sites in Shanksville, where 40 died, and Arlington, where 184 died.
Bush also planned to speak from the Oval Office Monday evening.
New York Gov. George Pataki, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Rudolph Giuliani, who was mayor when the attacks occurred, joined the Bushes at the trade center site. Giuliani insisted that “we have to remain vigilant” to honour the memory of the victims and help to ensure that they didn’t die in vain.
“Five years from the date of the attack that changed our world, we’ve come back to remember the valour of those we’ve lost, those who innocently went to work that day and the brave souls who went in after them,” Giuliani said. “We have also come to be ever mindful of the courage of those who grieve and the light that still shines in their hearts.”
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also planned to speak Monday in remembrance of those who died, including the 24 Canadian casualties.
Torontonians were asked to drop flowers off at the U.S. consulate on University Ave. throughout the day.
Quotes on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks:
“Five years have come, and five years have gone, and still we stand together as one. We come back to this place to remember the heartbreaking anniversary – and each person who died here – those known and unknown to us, whose absence is always with us.” – New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
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“The pain just doesn’t go away.” – Dawn Donovan, 45, of Rutherford, N.J., gazing across the Hudson River from Jersey City toward ground zero, where friends of hers died.
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“We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history’s latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power.” – Vice President Dick Cheney, at a memorial ceremony at the Pentagon.
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“It’s very hard. Our family has just been ripped apart. I still hold a lot of anger, and that’s not only at the terrorists. I stayed mad at God for quite some time, even at Al (her husband), I stayed mad at him. I was supposed to have the rest of my life with him. We were together nine years. That is not forever.” – Rebecca Marchand, of Alamogordo, N.M., whose husband was a flight attendant on United Airlines Flight 175.
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“Thank God we’re safe. What I anticipated on Sept. 11 was that we would be attacked many times between then and now, and we haven’t been.” – Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in a television interview, also warning bluntly that terrorists would strike again and the nation must be prepared.
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“No matter what ethnic or religious background we may be, remembering and reflecting what happened five years ago brings us together as a nation, city and family.” – Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, asking that city’s houses of worship stay open all day Monday for people to reflect and remember.
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“We stand here today with pride because of heroism.” – Hamilton Peterson, whose father and stepmother died aboard hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, where passengers are believed to have stormed the cockpit before it crashed near Shanksville, Pa.
