Twenty years and 2,977 solemn reflections on loss
On Saturday morning at the World Trade Center site in New York City, they’ll begin just after 8:46 a.m., 20 years to the minute after the horror began.
That is the time, on Sept. 11, 2001, when the first victims of the terrorist attack on the United States lost their lives. When the fear and agony for others began. When New Yorkers looked up to the highest point on the skyline and saw smoke filling the sky. When people turned on their televisions to see something wrong, something big. American Airlines Flight 11 — it wasn’t yet known that it was a plane hijacked by five al-Qaida terrorists — had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, exploding in a ball of smoke and fire. The 87 passengers and crew members on board died instantly, the first victims.
On Saturday, the ceremony in Lower Manhattan, limited to family members of the attack’s victims and invited dignitaries, will begin. It will consist of reading the names of those who died that day.
So many names. Reading those names, saying them aloud, is how this nation chooses to formally remember that day. The reading will be done, aloud, by family members.
At 9:03 a.m., the reading will pause for a moment of silence. Church bells across the city will toll. This marks the time that United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower in a ball of orange flame as people around the world watched live. Sixty more victims, passengers and crew members, lost their lives in that moment when everyone in the world realized what was happening.
The reading of names will continue.
The site where the ceremonies in New York will take place is also built around those names, inscribed in slabs of black granite around two giant reflecting pools on the spot the where the twin towers stood. It is, even on an average day, a sombre, reflective place in the heart of the hustle of downtown Manhattan, where people wander and gaze and reflect. The names are cut out of the stone of the memorial, the absence they represent carved into material that seems so solid.
At 9:37 a.m., the reading of names will pause again. The church bells will toll. This was the time when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., killing 59 passengers and crew, and 125 people inside the building. Having attacked the symbolic commercial heart of the U.S., the terrorists had now attacked its military headquarters.
On Saturday morning, they will be reading those names at the Pentagon too, where a memorial also stands today, made up of names inscribed on 184 separate cantilevered benches, marking that moment, remembering those lives.
They will go on reading those names, in New York and in Arlington.
At 9:59 a.m., the readings will pause again. Church bells will toll again. This was the moment when the South Tower collapsed, and 624 people who had been trapped inside were killed. There were workers in the offices who had been trapped on the upper floors, trying to find the only intact stairwell that would have taken them to the ground floor. There were firefighters and police officers who had rushed into the building to try to save them. The efforts of those first responders were carried on by their colleagues, whose rescue work would continue for days, and weeks.
The reading of the names will continue.
At 10:03 a.m., the reading will pause for a fourth time, to mark the moment when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pa. The 40 passengers and crew members who died instantly in that crash are remembered as the first Americans to fight back against the terrorists. Having heard by phone about the other planes striking the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, those on board realized they were trapped aboard a flying missile . It is thought that the target the four hijackers of Flight 93 had in mind was either the Capitol building or the White House. The passengers fought for control of the plane, bringing it crashing down in an open field.
On that site in Shanksville, there is today a memorial to those passengers, their names inscribed on white marble slabs that stand eight feet tall. Next to them is a “Tower of Voices” where 40 wind chimes, one for each passenger, ring a constant memorial.
On Saturday, in Shanksville, they will be reading the names too.
At 10:28 a.m., the reading will be paused a final time, the church bells rung once again. This was the moment that the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, killing 1,466 tenants and visitors, including more firefighters, police and ambulance workers who had been continuing to attempt to evacuate the building. Though they died, their work was not in vain: investigators later estimated that when the buildings were struck, they contained about 17,400 people — meaning that 11 out of 12 of those inside at the time of the attacks got out before they collapsed, according to a 2004 New York Times report.
Standing at the memorial site as the family members of the immediate victims will be Saturday morning, some of the scale of that damage — the giant wound inflicted on the world’s most powerful country and its largest city — is evident. The two memorials in black granite — black holes in the ground, 30-foot waterfalls cascading down into the darkness, and the grounds around them take up the equivalent of a few city blocks.
President Joe Biden will visit all three memorial sites on Saturday. Former president Barack Obama will be present at the ceremony in New York. Former president George W. Bush will speak prior to the Shanksville ceremony. Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are expected to mark the day privately. Former president Donald Trump is scheduled to provide commentary during a boxing match.
At about 3 p.m., the World Trade Center site will be reopened to the public. Later in the evening, two bright beams of light will be shone into the sky, from sunset until dawn on Sunday — a memorial representing what was symbolically lost, the absence in the collective memory of Americans and those around the world. But well before that, they will read all of the names of those killed 20 years ago.
It is expected to take until about 1 p.m. to get through them. Two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-seven names. In New York City, Arlington and Shanksville, they will read them all, as those who knew them will remember who they were, and an entire country reflects on what was lost.