Minutes of Silence and Shafts of
Light Recall New York's Dark Day
By DAN BARRY
Dusk now draped the city. The
time had come. A girl named
Valerie Webb, 12 years old and
an orphan, turned to her left to
throw a switch. Gradually they
materialized: two soaring towers
of light, defiantly piercing the
night sky from the wounded
western stretch of Lower
Manhattan.
These luminous ghosts, created
by the strategic positioning of 88
high- powered searchlights, were
the final tribute in a series of
public efforts yesterday to
remember what hardly had been
forgotten. That exactly six months
ago, on Sept. 11, a terrorist attack
destroyed the World Trade
Center and killed more than 2,800
people, including that young girl's
gentlemanly father, Officer
Nathaniel Webb of the Port
Authority of New York and New
Jersey.
Six months may not be a year, but
six months is also not yesterday.
That awkward period of
in-between — in which a city felt
the strong pull of commemoration
— made for a long and somber
day. Firefighters and police
officers gathered to remember
their dead comrades.
Construction workers paused
from their task of clearing the
grim site known as ground zero.
Bells tolled, the names of the
many dead were read out, and
moments of silence expressed
what words could not.
"We can't do enough," Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg said in a
tribute. "We can't say the right
things. But let us never forget
those that we have lost. Let us not
lose sight of what we have to do
again."
The sun shone bright at 8:30
yesterday morning, just as it had
on Sept. 11. But its light did little
to warm the several hundred
relatives of the dead who
gathered in 28-degree
temperature for a commemoration
in Battery Park, a few blocks
south of the disaster site. They
clutched yellow tulips and
daffodils and watched as officials
unveiled "The Sphere," a 22-ton
orb of steel and bronze that had
been recovered from the rubble.
When it was the centerpiece to
the World Trade Center plaza, the
sculpture symbolized free trade.
Now, battered, punctured and
gashed, it will serve as a
temporary tribute to what Mayor
Bloomberg called "the resiliency
of the American spirit."
Nor did sunlight warm the
thousands of New York police
officers who gathered all over the
city — in front of station houses,
outside police headquarters in
Lower Manhattan, before any
building used by the police — to
remember 23 comrades who had
died six months earlier.
Activity at the 13th Precinct
station house on East 21st Street
was typical. Blue sawhorses
were placed across either end of
the street, between Second and
Third Avenues, to stop traffic.
About 100 officers filed out to
stand in formation, a few joking
around like students at a fire drill.
But when the commander, Deputy
Inspector Patrick J. McCarthy,
stepped up to a portable lectern
to read a statement — the same
statement being read across the
city — the kidding stopped and
somberness set in.
Inspector McCarthy spoke
forcefully of officers who had
responded in the city's darkest
hour, of lives lost for the sake of
others, of how time will "never erase the sacrifice they
made." But his voice cracked as he read the names of the
officers who had died, especially when he came to two
from the 13th Precinct: Robert Fazio and Moira Ann
Smith. (Their memories live on in the station house in
signatures on reports, in photographs on walls, in
suddenly recalled habits, Sgt. Joseph Canny said later.
"Bobby would have done that, Moira would have done
this.")
At 8:46 yesterday, the moment at which the first hijacked
plane slammed into the World Trade Center's north tower,
many paused in silence. Police officers stood motionless.
Firefighters, thousands of them, bowed their heads in more
than 200 firehouses throughout the five boroughs. The
operators of the grapplers at the disaster site cut their
engines. All the while, through Battery Park's winter-bare
trees could be seen the downtown bustle — of commuters
emerging from the subway station, of buses and taxis and
cars — that had been stilled six months earlier. The
clamor made for an urban hallelujah.
A minute later, the tribute resumed. Mr. Bloomberg read a
statement from President Bush that ended, "May God bless
you all and may God continue to bless America." Gov.
George E. Pataki spoke, then former Mayor Rudolph W.
Giuliani.
Then two boys stepped forward: Philip Raimondi, 16, and
his 12-year- old brother, Peter. Pinned to their lapels was
a photograph of their father, Peter F. Raimondi, a vice
president for Carr Futures who used to play chess and
basketball with them. Philip delivered a short reading, and
then Peter approached a lectern that was only slightly
shorter than he was. The boy read a poem that ended, "Just
around the corner, all is well," and then he was gone.
At 9:03, Mayor Bloomberg said: "Please join me in a
moment of silence. The second airplane has just struck the
second tower." While a few of the relatives wept, the
sighs of the mayor could be heard over the lectern's
microphone.
The ceremony at "The Sphere" had ended, but not the
schedule of sorrow. At St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway,
around the corner from ground zero, people took turns
reading from a list of the names of the dead, while
disaster-site workers sat in the back pews, sipping coffee
and listening. It took one reader, Mr. Giuliani, 12 minutes
to read 250 names, from John A. Candela, a trader at
Cantor Fitzgerald, to Robert J. Deraney, a financial
consultant.
In Rockaway Beach, at St. Francis de Sales Church, yet
another funeral was held, for yet another firefighter. His
name was Richard Allen, he was 31 years old, and he had
been with the department for only a few months. Hundreds
of firefighters filled Rockaway Beach Boulevard to bid
him farewell in a once-singular ritual that in the last six
months has become so sadly routine in the neighborhoods
and suburbs of New York.
Not that New York was the only place to suffer, or to
spend yesterday remembering. In western Pennsylvania,
mourners laid flowers in the spot where another hijacked
plane crashed that September morning, killing 44 people.
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
spoke of the moment a fourth hijacked jet plowed into the
building's side, killing 189 people.
"Six months ago today, one could walk out these steps and
see a peaceful blue sky like this," he said. "But if one
turned to the northwest, you'd see black smoke, thick
smoke and flame rising from this building."
But yesterday's signal event came at 6:55 p.m. in Lower
Manhattan, a block away from the attack site. Valerie
Webb, whose mother, Pamela Pettaway, died of a heart
attack in 2000, threw the switch. Jessye Norman, the
soprano, sang "America the Beautiful," then walked
across the stage to take the girl's hand.
Then woman and child disappeared into the night, leaving
the people of the city to look up.
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