IN OUR HEARTS FOREVER
City pays tribute to those lost 17 years ago
Police officer mourns his brethren and the thousands of others killed on 9/11 during somber ceremony under cloud-covered skies at Ground Zero on Tuesday.
It was another Tuesday morning in September, the sky slate gray instead of crystal blue, as loved ones of nearly 3,000 victims of 9/11 observed the 17th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.
Thousands of relatives, survivors and first responders filled Ground Zero for the somber annual ceremony marking the deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil — and honoring each of those killed by terrorists.
For many, it marked a return to the spot that their loved ones never left: Roughly 1,100 of the 2,753 killed were never identified from the remains recovered at the World Trade Center site. For others, born after Sept. 11, 2001, it was a chance to pay homage to heroes they would never meet: Fathers, grandmothers, aunt, uncles, cousins and other kin.
Edwin Morales was among those who never buried their dead. He came to honor his cousin Ruben Correa, an FDNY Engine 74 member killed while helping people escape from the Marriott hotel at the Trade Center site.
“When the South Tower collapsed on the hotel, at that moment my cousin was killed,” said Morales, a National Guard reservist who arrived in full uniform. “They never found my cousin, so he is here with us right now.”
Morales clutched a handmade, framed sign dedicated to his cousin and sent to him by a Pennsylvania student. The youngster chose Correa as his hero for a school project, then turned the sign over to the late firefighter’s family.
The sounds of drums and bagpipes filled the air when the service began at 8:42 a.m., followed by a moment of silence four minutes later
to mark the moment when the first plane struck the North Tower.
A second moment was observed at 9:03 a.m., the time when the second plane struck the South Tower.
Additional pauses marked the rest of the day’s grim chronology: The plane striking the Pentagon (9:37 a.m.), the collapse of the South Tower (9:59 a.m.), the crash of Flight 93 (10:03 a.m.) and the fall of the North Tower (10:28 a.m.).
The annual recitation of the victims’ names, typically a straightforward part of the service, veered sharply off-script when the son of 9/11 victim Frances Haros, 76, called for an end to the politicization of the terror attacks.
“One more thing if I may . . . . This year network commentators said the President’s performance in Helsinki was a traitorous act as was 9/11,” said Nicholas Haros Jr. “And last week a senator attacked a Supreme Court nominee and called him a racist for comments after 9/11. Stop. Stop. Please. Stop using the bones and ashes of our loved ones as props for your political theater.
“Their lives and sacrifices are worth so much more. Let’s not trivialize them or us. It hurts.”
Reader Thomas Langer spoke of a different kind of pain — the agony suffered by his brother Timmy, who lost his pregnant wife, Vanessa, in the terrorist attacks.
The distraught widower “drank himself to death” in less than four years after she perished in the rubble, the surviving sibling said.
“I witnessed my brother endure the pain that no one human being was ever meant to bear,” said Thomas Langer.
Most of the readers instead offered fond recollections of their loved and lost ones.
The younger brother of Luiz Jiminez Jr. — a 25-year-old Queens man killed while working at Marsh & McLennan — paid homage to his sibling.
“The greatest brother of all time,” said Jimmy Jiminez. “We still miss you.”
Even after 17 years, the recitation of the victims’ names remained powerful and moving as the crowd listened intently during the listing, one by one for close to four hours, of 9/11 dead. During the moments of silence, the sounds of the water flowing in the memorial’s two reflecting pools wafted through the damp morning air. The event began with an NYPD contingent carrying an American flag through a crowd where many wore Tshirts, clutched photos and waved signs recalling their lost family members. The ceremony ended at 12:14 p.m. with the playing of “Taps” before the hushed crowd on the hallowed 16acre stretch of lower Manhattan. The overcast morning stood in contrast to the Tuesday morning of the attack, when the skies were a bright blue as two hijacked planes slammed into the twin 110-story buildings. As the fog lifted during this year’s event, the 1,176-foot 1 World Trade Center slowly appeared above the site. The ceremony also paid tribute to those killed in the Pentagon, aboard United Airlines Flight 93 and in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Lynn Downey, the daughter of legendary FDNY Deputy Chief Ray Downey, sent along greetings from the firefighter’s five children and 15 grandchildren to their missing patriarch. Downey, a 39-year veteran of the NYPD, died eight days before his 64th birthday. “Continue to send the ladybugs as a reminder that you are always with us,” she said. “May the 343 firefighters, the police officers and all innocent victims of that day rest in peace.”