C. Fraser Smith, BridgeTower Media Newswires
They wanted to redraw the skyline of our lives.
Iconic buildings fell. We stood.
No one can forget the murderous trajectory of the second plane. The first came without warning or witness.
I saw the swerving crash on television. I was waiting for an elevator in the lobby of The Sun, where I worked at the time.
Over Shanksville, Pennsylvania, passengers made their way into the lexicon of heroic freedom and courage. They took control of an airliner headed for the White House or the U.S. Capitol. Passengers learned by cellphone what had happened at the Pentagon.
They made a plan, surely knowing that taking back control of the plane meant their own death.
“Let’s roll,” one of them said.
Hard actually to say but there were moments on 911 and in the days immediately following, moments we would welcome back.
Have we ever been closer, more united than we were on that day and the days that followed?
The horror and the pride echoed for days and months – years. Forever.
What sort of person would use this hallowed ground to make political points? Donald Trump charged that Muslim Americans cheered as the towers crumbled, a scurrilous and almost certainly false claim.
His aim, apparently? Make Muslims appear even more threatening than he says they are.
When I first visited Ground Zero in 2003, I wrote a column. Americans were turning this crime scene into a holy place:
“The procession of mourners, starts in front of a church’s stone chapel, its cemetery dwarfed by what had become one of the world’s largest burial grounds … dangling Twin Tower girders; pulverized concrete; snarls of wire were everywhere. If a building were a living thing, these would be its bones and nervous system.”
Further, “… along the makeshift viewing route, visitors stood on financial district streets called Liberty Street and then Liberty Plaza.
“Hawkers handed out religious tracts; a man played ‘America the Beautiful’ on a flute, hoping for a few coins; on a chain link fence … a letter of condolence from Den #5, Naples, Florida: ‘We Love You.’
“This dusty trail of tears goes on to Rector Street, where a fuller panorama unfolds. A portion of one tower remained upright, a jagged, defiant fragment.
“’Overwhelming,’ says Tiffany Richardson of Salisbury, MD. One good thing. She said: 40,000 trade center workers could have been in there.
“None of us will ever forget. Richardson surely won’t – nor will her daughter. The child’s second birthday party was canceled.
“A woman with a spangled lapel pin pulls her wheeled suitcase up to one of the restraining barriers seeming to know in advance that she won’t be up to her mission: paying her respects. She begins to cry silently, turning back into the river of people.
“Had she lost a loved one? Or was she grieving for all of the nearly 3,000 dead. Maybe both.
“People came from across the nation to shoulder some of the sorrow, to say with an afternoon’s presence that we ache for those who perished and their families.
“’We need a memorial here,’ says one visitor, ‘a park where people can come to reflect and not forget what they did to our country — not just to New Yorkers.’”
Such a place stands there now. Visitors can run their fingers over the names on the chest-high wall encircling a glistening pool above which rises the Freedom Tower, 1776 feet tall. Each element seems majestic and grand.
Until 911, said Bill Toohey, a Baltimore County Police Department spokesman, New York seemed to him the least typical of American cities:
“It’s too big, too artsy, too sinful, too noisy to be American,” he said.
Now, for him and his wife, Rosemary, no place ever meant more. They met in New York, married and had three children there. They lived in several New York neighborhoods, moving every time their family grew. They worked at Rockefeller Center, looked out at the city from the Rainbow Grill, knew which subway to ride to Wall Street.
Then, those who passed the smoldering bier can provide their own internal memorials: part anguished scream, part prayer.
Fifteen years ago, a mourner named Kathy Hedrick said, “We’re walking on hallowed ground.”
True today, true forever.
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C. Fraser Smith is senior news analyst for WYPR. His email address is fsmith@wypr.org.
