The Associated Press
People watch the twin lights memorial rising above the New York city skyline from the waterfront in Jersey City, N.J., on Monday, six months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The two light beams are a temporary memorial that will light up every evening until April 13.

Nation takes solemn look back at momentous day

New York marks Sept. 11 horror with twin shafts of light

MICHAEL POWELL THE WASHINGTON POST

NEW YORK -- Two shafts of light rose into a periwinkle evening sky, two towers of memory rendered ghostly across this city.

Thousands gathered in the streets near ground zero Monday morning and night for tributes to the nearly 3,000 who died in New York. There were moments of silence -- at 8:46 a.m. and again at 9:03 a.m. -- as former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani implored Americans to "lift up our heads very, very high."

And at 6:45 p.m. EST, 88 high-powered beams of light merged into two shafts called the "Tribute in Light," which will shine at night until April 13. As the lights soared into a sharp and cold March night, silence fell on the thousands watching from the Brooklyn promenade, across the East River from the glistening Manhattan skyline.

There were soft claps and sighs. Ryan Haggerty, a college student who ran from the falling towers that morning in September, lit a votive candle and closed his eyes. He passed his hands over his eyes and turned to leave.

"I don't know why I did this except that something very irrational happened to this city," he said. "Faith is my way of confronting the irrational."

One heard similar words as well in Shanksville, Pa., where at 10:06 a.m. church bells tolled slowly 40 times, in honor of each victim aboard Flight 93, the only one of the four hijacked airliners that did not reach a target to claim yet more lives.

In New York, the lighting of the incandescent towers ended a day of remembrance, as many spoke of pain and a new determination.

Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios asked God to "remember those who six months ago were taken from us, from this very place, in a most cruel and exceedingly painful way."

While the day wore on, masked workers continued to dig and scrape in the vast open pits that were New York's tallest skyscrapers.

Workers have identified 755 bodies. Police classify 158 people as still missing in the collapse. And there is the city's gap-toothed skyline.

"Do I remember? Try every day. I pull into the toll plaza on the Verrazano Bridge and look for the towers," said Richard Cascalenda, a pharmacist at the Park Slope Pharmacy in Brooklyn. "I cross myself -- I'm Catholic, y'know? I say a little prayer."

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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