Ceremonies held in New York, Pentagon, Pennsylvania to honour September 11 victims 25 years on from terror attacks
Maria Tsvetkova, Idrees Ali and Joseph Ax
Twenty-five years after the deadliest attack on US soil, Americans paused on Friday to commemorate the nearly 3000 people killed when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania – and to wrestle with the consequences of September 11 that reverberate to this day.
In New York, family members of the victims joined Vice President JD Vance and four former US presidents at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. The ceremony began, as always, at 8.46am with a moment of silence to remember the shocking instant when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Centre’s North Tower.
Shortly after, victims’ family members began reading aloud the names of all 2977 people who died on September 11, as well as the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, a sombre recitation that will last for hours. In a reminder of the time that has passed, some readers were children who had never met the relatives they lost in 2001.
Other moments of silence, marking when the other three airplanes crashed and the two towers collapsed, will follow. For the first time, a seventh silence will be observed to honour the thousands who have died since 2001 from illnesses tied to the toxic dust that poisoned the air for months afterward.
Gregory Carafello came to the ceremony to honour the memory of his lifelong friend James Martello, who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm that lost more than 650 employees in the attacks. Carafello himself was on the 18th floor of the South Tower but managed to evacuate.
“Everyone should realise that it was a very bad, catastrophic day for many families,” he said. “These were not warriors. These were people like you and me going to work.”
In Arlington, Virginia, senior military leaders gathered amid heavy rain early on Friday to watch the unfurling of an American flag at the west side of the Pentagon where American Airlines Flight 77 hit, killing 184 people in all. President Donald Trump is expected to speak at a ceremony there.
Mourners will also hold a ceremony in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at the crash site where passengers brought down one of the four hijacked jetliners, United Airlines Flight 93, that had been headed for Washington.
The attacks shaped generations of Americans who lived through the day or grew up in its aftermath, influencing US foreign policy, domestic politics and public attitudes toward security.
But for many whom the attacks directly affected – the victims’ families, first responders and rescue workers – the anniversary is a tribute to the lives lost on a clear blue day a quarter-century ago and the heartbreak that followed.
Caroline Ogonowski’s father, John, was the captain of Flight 11, which took off from Boston 47 minutes before striking the North Tower.
Ogonowski, now 39, had her first baby this year and named him after her father. She brought him her father’s grave last week and was attending a memorial ceremony in Boston on Friday.
“This year, there’s this new sadness in knowing that they won’t ever get to know each other,” Ogonowski, who has worked in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, said in a phone interview. “My father will never know his grandson. And my son will never know his grandfather.
“We owe it to my father and all the others that we lost on that day to make sure that we continue to teach future generations about what happened, about who these people were, who these heroes were, how our country came together and became stronger because of it,” she added.
A generation of Americans has grown up since 2001 who are too young to remember the attacks but whose lives were fundamentally altered by them.
The attacks initiated the “war on terror,” which led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that lasted years. The resulting public backlash helped fuel Trump’s rise a decade ago, when he vowed not to start new foreign entanglements – a promise being tested by the current Iran war.
At home, Americans expressed deep solidarity and patriotism, as well as sorrow, in the immediate wake of the attacks.
At the same time, however, Muslim Americans and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries faced a rise in prejudice and hate crimes. Public polls have found 9/11 colours Americans’ perceptions of Muslims to this day. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has faced calls from some Republicans to skip Friday’s ceremony, which he rejected.
Casualties were not limited to those who perished on September 11. Many rescue workers who spent weeks or months at the site afterward, as well as nearby residents and others, were sickened by toxins in the air and eventually died.
Patrick Whalen’s father, also named Patrick, was a New York City firefighter who responded to the attacks and continued working at Ground Zero for months amid the dust and rubble. In 2020, he was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer linked to exposure to toxic carcinogens, and died in 2021.
“The government told him it was safe to breathe, and, obviously, it was not true,” the younger Whalen said after a New York City Fire Department memorial service this week.
Information that the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe came from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Its former administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, apologised in a 2016 interview with The Guardian, saying the agency did its best with the knowledge it had.
The New York City Fire Department lost 343 members on September 11. More than 600 additional firefighters, including some retired members who took part in the rescue effort, have died of 9/11-related illnesses since then, department figures show. Twenty-six have died this year alone.
Reuters
