‘When I come here, when the wind blows, it’s like he’s kissing me’
The families assembled at ground zero again, the place where nearly 3,000 people died on that bright September morning. There was grief again, and the mournful sound of bagpipes echoed again. And there was the rhythm of names of the dead being recited again.
It has been 18 years since terrorists commandeered airplanes and the twin towers of the World Trade Center were brought down.
The commemoration at ground zero — by now an annual rite of remembrance that follows a familiar, somber script — began Wednesday with an honor guard carrying the flag.
Then at 8:46 a.m., the time when the first plane slammed into the north tower, there was a moment of silence, the first of six noting the strikes at the trade center and the Pentagon, the plane crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the collapse of the twin towers in a blizzard of toxic dust and flaming debris.
President Donald Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, led a moment of silence at the White House before going to the Pentagon, where 64 people aboard a hijacked American Airlines jet were killed, along with
125 people in the building. The president said that any terrorist who comes to the United States would be met with a force “the likes of which the United States has never used before.”
Trump delivered his remarks at the Pentagon days after canceling peace talks with the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan in 2001 and provided a haven for alQaida, the terrorist group that hijacked the planes in the attacks. In Shanksville, Vice President Mike Pence spoke at an observance celebrating the heroism of the plane passengers who took on the hijackers and sacrificed their lives.
At ground zero, some family members brushed away tears as the names were read. Some carried flowers or wore T-shirts with names. Some held placards above the crowd with images of their loved ones.
Margie Miller went to find her husband’s name, engraved in stone. She said she always touches it.
Her husband, Joel, was 55 when he died. He was an assistant vice president at Marsh and McLennan, the management-consulting firm. His office was on the 97th floor.
“This is his place, and it’s my place,” Miller said. “It’s where I feel him. He breathed here and he died here.”
La-Shawn Clark said this anniversary was a particularly difficult one because her husband — Benjamin Keefe Clark, an executive with Fiduciary Trust International who was 39 and whose office was on the 93rd floor of the south tower — cannot share a milestone, the birth of their first granddaughter, due next month.
She said that for weeks after the attacks, as the rescue and recover teams did their work, she would call her husband’s cellphone just to hear his voice, recorded on the voicemail system. Wiping away tears on Wednesday, she said that she knew she would not get a call back.
“There’s never closure,” she said, “but when I come here, when the wind blows, it’s like he’s kissing me.”
In the years since the attacks, those who were children in 2001, like Ashley Nelson, have grown up and found their places in the world — a world that has struggled to adapt to terror attacks. Nelson was 6 years old in 2001. On Wednesday, she paid tribute as she stood silently, her arms crossed, across the West Side Highway from the ceremony.
“It helps me put things into perspective,” she said, even though she did not know anyone who was killed in the attacks. “The importance of remembering the people that lost their lives and who sacrificed, that’s important to me.”