New York City marks 9/11 at a time of harrowing loss

The families came together again Friday to honor their loved ones at the site where their lives were stolen. The names of the victims resounded across the plaza, and the bells tolled in New York City as they have in years past, sounding a peal of collective mourning for those killed on one of the darkest days in American history.

Yet the somber, solemn rituals held at the Sept. 11 memorial to mark a tragedy that brought New York and the nation to its knees were unmistakably altered at a time of another crisis — one also marked by devastating loss.

Some of America’s most notable politicians were in attendance, including Vice President Mike Pence and Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for president. All of them wore masks in addition to their customary memorial ribbons and lapel pins. They exchanged elbow bumps, then distanced themselves 6 feet apart as they stood for the national anthem.

There was no stage in front of them Friday, and no speeches given to the mourners gathered at the site known as ground zero — two hallmarks of past memorials that were removed in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

It has been 19 years since passenger jets hijacked by terrorists slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 lives were lost, some 2,700 of them in New York, in the deadliest attack in the country’s history, a blow to America’s psyche.

Now, the United States confronts a far deadlier calamity. During the pandemic, the United States has exceeded the death toll of Sept. 11, 2001, by orders of magnitude. In New York City alone, more than 23,000 people have died of the virus.

“It’s two of the most traumatic things that have ever happened to New York City, and it’s probably changed it forever,” said Diane Massaroli, whose husband, Michael, was killed in the World Trade Center.

“We just have to find a different way to live now,” she said, her hands clutching a bouquet of roses and an old wedding photograph. “Like I had to find a different way to live then.”

Although the city has fought its way back from a spring when it was the epicenter of the pandemic and hundreds were dying daily, the crisis has not ended. The threat of Covid-19 still lurks.

Having transformed so many aspects of daily life, the pandemic thus affected one of the city’s most sacred and solemn moments. The family members gathered at the Sept. 11 memorial’s 8-acre site in lower Manhattan were asked to wear masks and stay socially distant, and others were discouraged from gathering near ground zero.

There was no platform where readers took turns at a microphone, honoring the victims by reciting their names. The list this year was read and recorded in advance, then broadcast online and at the plaza.

Still, politicians and civic leaders gathered, including some who have publicly sparred over the response to the virus, like Pence, Biden and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York. Despite their disagreements, they exchanged genial greetings, exhibiting unity at a time more often marked by bitter partisan division.

Biden earlier said he would be following tradition and suspending campaigning for the day, including pausing ads in the midst of a bitter contested election. He will travel later to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, are also expected to attend a memorial service.

Before the ceremony Friday morning, the streets around the memorial were filled with Secret Service officers and firefighters and police officers in their dress blues. About half of them wore masks.

Also planned for the day was an F-18 jet flyover, an announcement that provoked fierce backlash from city residents shaken from its echoes of a moment when planes were used as deadly weapons. The Department of Defense later canceled it after a request from City Hall, a City Hall spokesman said.

The changes to the ceremony were not without controversy. Last month, the memorial said that it would do away with its annual Tribute in Light, in which two blue beams of light are projected over the city until the dawn of Sept. 12.

The decision, which the memorial said would prevent crowds gathering, was reversed after it provoked outrage from some victims’ relatives, elected leaders, and police and firefighter unions.

Still, unhappy with the changes to the ceremony, the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which honors a firefighter who died while responding to the attack, held a simultaneous memorial just blocks away.

At that event, around 125 relatives of 9/11 victims read the names of those who died on a stage at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, just blocks away from the Sept. 11 memorial. Attendees wore masks, and those onstage stayed 6 feet apart.

Pence and his wife, Karen, also attended that ceremony, where they read biblical passages.

“I pray these ancient words will comfort your loss and ours,” Pence said, before reading the words from Psalm 23.

Frank Siller, the brother of Stephen Siller and the foundation’s chief executive, said it was emotionally powerful for many victims’ families to say a loved one’s name in front of other attendees.

“They want to tell their family’s story,” Siller said Thursday. “And they should be able to tell that story.”

On Thursday night, city officials also announced that an F-18 jet would fly over the Hudson River on Friday afternoon. It was not immediately clear who planned the flyover, but it provoked fierce backlash on social media given that planes were used as deadly weapons during the Sept. 11 attack.

In the months that New York City has grappled with the pandemic, city leaders and elected officials have often invoked 9/11 as a rallying point, citing it as a moment when New Yorkers exhibited tremendous resilience in the face of a devastating crisis.

“People grieved with us, but they also admired New York City in that moment of crisis,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday. “And now we find ourselves in a new and different crisis, and once again, people all over this country, people all over this world are looking at this city with tremendous awe.”

Several historians acknowledged the parallels between the tragedy that befell the city on Sept. 11, 2001, and the persistent crisis that New Yorkers were living through now.

“Everyone in New York knew someone who was killed on 9/11. And everyone in New York now knows somebody who died of Covid-19,” said Louise Mirrer, president of the New-York Historical Society. “And people were similarly uncertain and terrified.”

Still, historians cautioned against drawing too neat a comparison. Chief among the distinctions, they said, is that the pandemic continues, and we don’t know when it will end.

“We’re not through this crisis yet,” said Mary Marshall Clark, an oral historian who has been interviewing New Yorkers about their experiences during the pandemic. “We’re not sure what the new demands are going to be.”

Clark, director of Columbia University’s Center for Oral History Research, had helped lead a project to interview New Yorkers about their experiences of 9/11. When the pandemic struck, she and her colleagues embarked on a similar endeavour to document it.

“People are still processing this and what it will mean for them and their families and their safety,” Clark said.

Matthew Vaz, a professor at the City College of New York, said that the virus, like the 9/11 attack, had thrown the city into a kind of identity crisis.

But the attack on the World Trade Center created a definitive physical scar — a hole in the ground, a space in the skyline — from which the city could rebound and rally around.

The impact of the virus has been more pervasive and systemic, Vaz said, making the city’s path to recovery less clear.

Yet New York’s history has been filled with adversity confronted and overcome, Mirrer said.

“So many times, New York has really been on the verge of destruction,” she said. “It’s remarkable to see the city’s resiliency over time.”