9/11 memorial: Touchstone for families - and protesters

By JT Nguyen Sep 11, 2011, 21:33 GMT

New York - Much was different this year on the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the US - for families as well as critics with long-simmering feelings about September 11, 2001.

As in years past, bells were rung on Sunday and names read and ceremonies held at the exact hour of the six events that unravelled over the course of 1 hour 42 minutes: The brazen crashing of four hijacked passenger planes into New York's two World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania; and the subsequent collapsee of the two towers.

But this year, 9/11 families got their first glimpse - and touch - of the mammoth 700-million-dollar National September 11 Memorial in New York, its twin reflecting pools, its waterfalls, and most importantly, the inscription of the 2,977 names of those who died in the four attacks.

After the ceremony, families filtered along the walls to claim the names of the lost. Some took rubbings of the deep engravings. Others stuck roses and American flags into the impressions.

For many, the memorial is the only physical remembrance they have of the dead: Of the 2,752 people killed in the twin towers destruction, remains of only 1,630 - often just tiny skin or bone fragments - have been identified through DNA analysis. Most of the rest disappeared in the inferno.

The other transformation of the site also came into view with four new skyscrapers rising rapidly, one storey a week, to replace the crumbled 110-storey towers.

Then there were the protests, including a three-way stand-off of sorts.

In years past, there was little tolerance for the sort of expressions seen on Sunday in the streets not far from the ceremony.

Terry Jones, the self-proclaimed pastor of a small Christian church in Florida who provoked worldwide outrage for his threat to burn Korans on the 2010 anniversary, came to New York to denounce Islamic extremists for 9/11 and call on Muslims to show 'repentance' and pay reparations.

'We are here to raise the issue of Islamic radicals and to stage a protest against the mosque built near ground zero,' Jones told the German Press Agendy dpa. He said he was prevented from protesting in front of the mosque two blocs north of ground zero.

Jones clashed with a group claiming that former president George W Bush had staged the 9/11 attacks - a popular theory in Europe and across the Arab world.

The anti-Bush group also clashed with a group of uniformed New York firefighters, who lost 343 members as they tried to rescue people from the twin towering infernos. New York uniformed police officers restrained the two sides from clashing.

In the background, Harley Davidson motorcycles ridden by the country's traditional group of patriotic Vietnam veterans roared around the streets in lower Manhattan, completing the atypically chaotic atmosphere for a 9/11 anniversary event.

But some family members savoured the quiet nearer the new national memorial. Michael Rodriguez, whose brother Rick, a police officer , died when he went back into a tower to pull out more people after saving two, came from New Jersey to Trinity Church's St Paul's Chapel, just a block away.

'I came here to raise awareness of the terrorist events,' Rodriguez said. 'Give them another year, and the attacks may be forgotten. But this place gives hope to people.'

Rodriguez tied a white ribbon to the chapel's black steel gate after writing a few words on the ribbon, 'Remember with Love.'

By day's end, the black steel gate was white with ribbons attached by policemen and firefighters who had used the 1766 chapel as a retreat from the exhaustion of working to save people and later find the remains of the victims. The image of rescue workers from around the country working with sniffer dogs, whose feet became scorched from the smoking ruins, is indelibly engrained in the nation's memory.

St Paul's also was one of the posting sites for relatives who left haunting messages all over lower Manhattan with names and phone numbers in case loved ones turned up.

Across the city Sunday morning, bells rang and prayers were recited in churches in memory of the dead, but the formal commemoration was held without religious leaders, a rule imposed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg since the earliest anniversaries.

Bloomberg last week rejected renewed demands to include the clergy. But US President Barack Obama did cite a Bible scripture from Psalms 46 ('Be still, and know that I am God.'). Obama and George W Bush, who was president at the time of the attacks, were together for the first time at a 9/11 event at ground zero.

'It's ironic that the ceremony took place without religious leaders,' said Sharon Whitaker, who led a group of 11 people from the Heritage Baptist Church in Indiana. The group makes the trip every September 11 and distributes 80,000 booklets with Bible scriptures at ground zero.

'We all suffer from this event,' Whitaker said. 'I am a school teacher and I can't get away from what I saw on television on that day. Their lives are our lives,' she said.

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