9/11: Twelve Years Later, An Unwavering Focus On Remembrance

Loved ones of 9/11 victims gathered Wednesday on the new memorial plaza in  downtown Manhattan, where they started to read the names of the nearly 3,000  people who died 12 years ago, when hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade  Center and the Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pa.

Beforehand, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, musician Billy Joel, firefighters and others  were scheduled to join in a tribute motorcycle ride from a Manhattan firehouse  to ground zero.

“No matter how many years pass, this time comes around each year — and it’s  always the same,” said Karen Hinson of Seaford, N.Y., who lost her 34-year-old  brother, Michael Wittenstein, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee.

“My brother was never found, so this is where he is for us,” she said as she  arrived for the ceremony with her family early Wednesday.

While preparations for the ceremony were underway, with police barricades  blocking access to the site, life around the World Trade Center looked like any  other morning, with workers rushing to their jobs and construction cranes  looming over the area.

Name-reading, wreath-laying and other tributes also will be held at the  Pentagon and at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville while the  commemoration unfolds at Ground Zero, where the mayor who has helped orchestrate  the observances from their start will be watching for his last time in office.  And saying nothing.

Continuing a decision made last year, no politicians will speak, including  Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Over his years as mayor and chairman of the National Sept. 11 Memorial &  Museum, 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 largely succeeded at its goal of keeping the  commemoration centered on the attacks’ victims and their families and relatively  free of political image-making.

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 said.

Hinson said she would like the annual ceremony to be “more low-key, more  private” as the years go by.

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