GROUND ZERO
16 years after 9/11 attacks, a museum, tour and memories will move you
MNEWYORK ichele McNally studied theater arts in college, a fine preparation for working in this frenetic city, one of the world’s biggest stages.
As a guide for New York Tour 1, the 32-year-old woman has educated visitors about the Broadway theater district, taken fashionistas on shopping sprees and accompanied food lovers on a movable feast of memorable pizza places.
Five years of experience and her personal connection to the events of Sept. 11, 2001 qualify Ms. McNally for guiding visitors on an hour-and-a-half walking tour that covers the 9/11 memorial fountains, Zuccotti Park and the rebuilt complex of seven buildings called the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
She is articulate, engaging and encourages people to ask questions.
“I’m a New Yorker so I’m very used to being interrupted and yelled at,” she says, adding that her Irish and Italian roots are the reason so many of her relatives are police officers and firefighters.
On a rainy Monday in August, Ms. McNally meets a tour group outside St. Paul’s Chapel, where George Washington attended Episcopal services. Built in 1766, the Georgian-style church became a physical and spiritual refuge for police officers and firefighters during eight months of rescue and recovery work at ground zero.
Ms. McNally carries standard props for tour guides — a black binder filled with vivid pictures under one arm and an umbrella printed with a famous Paris street scene in the other. Sunglasses are parked on her head.
She grew up in Flushing, a neighborhood in the borough of Queens. She was a 16-year-old high school sophomore on the day hijackers forever altered America’s physical landscape and collective psyche by flying two planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center,
The North and South towers, Ms. McNally tells her listeners, were built to sustain the impact of a 707 passenger jet. That’s because back in 1945, a plane struck the