In surely the first of many, many events today commemorating the anniversary of September 11th, music and prayers suffused the sunrise service at Wagner Park in Battery Park City, which began before dawn. We didnt know what we felt, we didnt know what to think, but we knew what to do, said Councilmember Alan Gerson, recalling that day five years ago. Friend helped friend, neighbor helped neighbor, stranger helped stranger.
The editorial pages of New Yorks newspapers are full of words marking the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001:
New York Times: “The time when we felt drawn together, changed by the shock of what had occurred, lasted long beyond the funerals, ceremonies and promises never to forget. It was a time when the nation was waiting to find out what it was supposed to do, to be called to the task that would give special lasting meaning to the tragedy that it had endured. But the call never came.”
Daily News: Some day, we must take [the children born after 9/11], as they will take their children, to whatever memorial rises at Ground Zero and talk to them about the victims, ensuring that the dead are not just names read in a mournful roll call once a year.
New York Post: “David Hobbs was just eight when his dad, Thomas, perished. ‘I was in 3rd grade,’ David says. ‘I was just getting to know him.’…America hadn’t asked for war, but rose swiftly to the challenge when war came – all around the world. Is America winning that war? Mistakes have been made – indeed, the history of warfare is littered with mistakes. But there has been no second strike on America’s shores since that dreadful day five years ago.”
Newsday: “There is the war in Afghanistan, not resolved; the war in Iraq, not resolved; the war against Islamic fundamentalists, not resolved. But that is not what today is about.Today is a day to come together, to recall that even as we were ripped apart by those terrible events, we were also brought together…”
New York Sun ” Five years after finding itself at the epicenter of the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, New York is a vibrant city in the midst of a great renaissance.”
El Diario: “Five years later, the feelings are still raw and there is no real recovery from the impact of this terrorist act….[W]hat is the legacy of 9/11?… It is a legacy of heroic acts by normal New Yorkers. ”
AM New York: “We must transform a gaping hole into a place of meaning and affirmation, a hole not merely in the sacred ground of a city, but the hole that’s still in our hearts.” ( Dont Lose Sight of the 9/11 Museum by Alice M. Greenwald, the director of the World Trade Center Memorial Museum.)
By Jonathan Mandell on September 11, 2006, 8:27 am
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