By KIRK SEMPLE, The New York Times
Two years after terrorists transformed four airplanes into missiles and killed more than 3,000 people, the country began a day of ceremonies and ritual this morning, remembering the victims yet also looking forward with hope for a safer, more peaceful world.
The gaping, 16-acre hole of ground zero, where the World Trade Center towers stood and 2,792 people died, filled with families of the victims for a subdued 3-hour ceremony that began at 8:38 a.m. and included four moments of silence: two at the exact moments two planes struck the towers, and two when the towers collapsed.
At 8:46 a.m., the time at which the first plane blew a hole in the north tower, the skies above New York — blue and cloudless, eerily similar to Sept. 11, 2001 — filled with the peal of bells.
“Today, again, we are a city that mourns,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York told the family members at ground zero. “We come here to honor those that we lost and to remember this day with sorrow. But we also remember with pride, and from that comes our resolve to go forward. Our faces and hopes turn toward the future.”
In a tribute that was both a memorial to the past and a gesture toward the future, children and young adults related to people who died at the site recited a roll call of the dead. “It is in them that the spirit of New York lives, carrying both our deepest memories and the bright, bright promise of tomorrow,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
Standing at a podium in pairs, the relatives read a list of the victims, sometimes breaking down in tears. The litany of names was interspersed with moments of silence framed by song and poetry.
Many of the hundreds of family members who attended the ceremony carried yellow roses and yellow carnations as they proceeded somberly down a ramp into the pit.
“I am here to complete my healing,” said Beverly Epps, 45, who attended the ceremony this morning in honor of her 29-year-old brother, Christopher, an accountant at Marsh & McLennan who died in the attacks. “I need that peace to say goodbye.”
But though today’s commemorations recognized an event that is slowly receding into the past, they came amid renewed anxiety about the possibility of more terrorist attacks against the United States and other countries. The American government said in a worldwide advisory today that Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network may be planning attacks possibly involving chemical or biological agents.
“With the second anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks upon us, we are seeing increasing indications that Al Qaeda is preparing to strike U.S. interests abroad,” the State Department said in an advisory it called a “worldwide caution.”
In Washington this morning, President Bush attended a service at St. John’s Church and observed a moment of silence at the White House at 8:46 a.m.
“We remember lives lost,” Mr. Bush said outside St. John’s Church, near the White House. “We remember the heroic deeds. We remember the compassion and the decency of our fellow citizens on that terrible day.”
The president’s schedule today is markedly more subdued than his recognition of the first anniversary when he attended memorial events at all three crash sites.
The Defense Department, which lost scores of employees when a plane slammed into the Pentagon, held a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery and the dedication of a stained-glass window at the Pentagon Chapel.
“Let this day always be a reminder to our nation, to the world, why we fight in freedom’s cause and why we must fight and win this global war on terrorism,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the cemetery, where he dedicated a burial marker to honor the 184 people who died in the Pentagon attack.
In Shanksville, Pa., an observance was held at a chapel near the field where United Flight 93 crashed, and church bells sounded just after 10 a.m., the time the airplane was reported down.
Elsewhere in the nation, rituals of mourning and peace were planned. Twisted steel extracted from the ruins of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and now on display in other states would provide the centerpiece ..” for ceremonies throughout the country.
In Toledo, Ohio, a flight of white doves was to be released following the reading of victims’ names. At Boston’s Logan International Airport, where two of the hijacked planes took off, there was a moment of silence to remember the victims.
The ceremonies come amid the backdrop of postwar troubles in Iraq, where American troops find themselves mired in an occupation opposed by a surging guerrilla resistance; American troops also remain in Afghanistan trying to suppress remnants of the Taliban.
The Bush Administration says it has made the country safer through its worldwide fight on terrorism and by strengthening airport and border security. But on Wednesday Mr. Bush asked for even broader law enforcement powers to fight terrorism under the USA Patriot Act.
The government’s new terrorist warning today said that European or Asian locations may be venues for the next round of attacks, “possibly to closely coincide with the anniversary of the 11 September attack,” according to the State Department statement. “We expect Al Qaeda will strive for new attacks that will be more devastating than the September 11 attack, possibly involving nonconventional weapons such as chemical or biological agents. We also cannot rule out the potential for Al Qaida to attempt a second catastrophic attack within the U.S.”
Today’s caution updates a July 29 warning about possible hijackings of commercial aircraft by terrorists and comes a day after the broadcast of a videotape that showed Mr. bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who exhorted Iraqi resistance fighters to “bury” American troops in Iraq.
But despite the State Department warning and the new videotape, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said today there was no need to raise the nation’s terror-alert level. “In so many ways across the board, around the country, we are much, much safer,” Mr. Ridge said in an interview on “The Early Show” on CBS.
In the Arlington, Va., ceremony this morning, Secretary Rumsfeld, did not mention either the advisory or the videotape, but he warned, “If we do not fight the terrorists over there in Iraq, in Afghanistan and across the world, then we will have to face them here and many more innocent men men, women and children, as well as the patriots defending them, will perish.”
Still, the day was principally one of remembrance and hope.
Two heart attacks had prevented Lillian Tetreault, 71, from attending other memorial ceremonies at ground zero, but today she came to remember her 37-year-old daughter, Renee, who had been a passenger on one of the planes that slammed into the towers.
“God has given me the strength to be here this time,” said Ms. Tetreault, who clutched a bouquet of yellow roses. “He knows I have to be here. I feel at peace here.”
The future now hovers over the site as much as the past. Consensus on what the site will look like remains elusive as developers and architects, politicians and investors, mourners and civic groups scrum over the master redevelopment plans. But eventually something will rise from the hole, and the scene this morning left no doubt that the world’s collective memory will form the foundation of whatever is built.