9/11 Ceremony Will Be a Quiet ‘Last’ for Mayor

Daily News Article   —   Posted on September 11, 2013

(by Jennifer Peltz, Associated Press) – When this year’s Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony unfolds at ground zero, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be watching from his last year in office. And saying nothing.

Over his years as mayor and chairman of the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum, Michael Bloomberg has sometimes tangled with victims’ relatives, religious leaders and other elected officials over an event steeped in symbolism and emotion.

But his administration has kept as its goal centering the commemoration on the attacks’ victims and their families and relatively free of political image-making. …No politicians – including the mayor – were allowed to speak last year or will be this year.

Memorial organizers expect to take primary responsibility for the ceremony next year and say they plan to continue concentrating the event on victims’ loved ones, even as the forthcoming museum creates a new, broader framework for remembering 9/11.

“As things evolve in the future, the focus on the remembrance is going to stay sacrosanct,” memorial president Joe Daniels says.

At today’s ceremony on the 2-year-old memorial plaza, relatives will again read the names of the nearly 3,000 people who died when hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pa. Readers also will recite the 1993 trade center bombing victims’ names.

At the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, where the’s ceremony will include bell-ringing and wreath-laying, officials gathered Tuesday to mark the start of construction on a visitor center. The Pentagon is holding a morning ceremony today for victims’ relatives and survivors of the attacks, with wreath-laying and remarks from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other officials, and an afternoon observance for Pentagon workers.

Deciding how to mark the anniversary of the worst terror strike in U.S. history was a sensitive task for Bloomberg and other leaders in the months after the attacks… Officials were planning a memorial service for thousands of families from 90 countries, while also setting a tone for how the public would commemorate 9/11.

“That was the challenge that we faced, and it was an enormous one,” recalls Jonathan Greenspun, who then was part of Bloomberg’s community affairs unit and now is a political consultant. “There was a recognition, by the mayor, that the ceremony had to transcend typical memorial services and the politics that are sometimes associated with them.”

Officials fielded about 4,500 suggestions – including a Broadway parade honoring rescue workers and a one-minute blackout of all Manhattan – before crafting a plan centered on reading names at ground zero.

“Our intent is to have a day of observances that are simple and powerful,” Bloomberg said as he and then-Gov. George Pataki announced the plans in 2002.

For years, the ceremonies did include politicians reading names and texts, and Bloomberg made remarks that over the years touched on Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 London subway bombings and the Biblical King David’s grief at the death of his son Absolom, among other topics.

Bloomberg’s role hasn’t always been comfortable, especially for a mayor whose brisk, pragmatic personality and early criticisms of the memorial struck some victims’ relatives as insensitive.

Background

September 11, 2001 (9/11):

• The September 11 attacks (also referred to as 9/11) were a series of four suicide attacks committed by Muslim extremists against United States civilians on September 11, 2001, coordinated to strike the areas of New York City and Washington, D.C. 
• On that Tuesday morning, 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets.
• The hijackers intentionally piloted two of those planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City; both towers collapsed within two hours.
• The hijackers also intentionally crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and intended to pilot the fourth hijacked jet, United Airlines Flight 93, into the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.; however, the plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after its passengers attempted to take control of the jet from the hijackers. 
• Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks, including the 246 civilians and 19 hijackers aboard the four planes.
• Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden cited U.S. support of Israel, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and sanctions against Iraq as motives for the attacks.
• The United States responded to the attacks by launching the War on Terror and invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, which had harbored al-Qaeda.
• In May 2011, after years at large, bin Laden was located and killed. (from wikipedia)

Deaths:  A total of 411 emergency workers died as they tried to rescue people and fight fires

• The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) lost 340 firefighters, a chaplain and 2 paramedics.  
• The New York City Police Department (NYPD) lost 23 officers.
• The Port Authority Police Department lost 37 officers. 
• Eight emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics from private emergency medical services units were killed.

At least 200 people fell or jumped to their deaths from the burning towers (as exemplified in the photograph The Falling Man), landing on the streets and rooftops of adjacent buildings hundreds of feet below.