Thursday, September 11, 2003, dawned clear and cool, the sky blue and cloudless-not quite as blue as Tuesday, September 11, 2001, and not quite as clear. But for New Yorkers after a rainy, humid summer, it verged on a perfect autumn day. Or would have, except for the sad round of memorials remembering the 2,645 men and women who perished at the World Trade Center. Their families and friends gathered at Ground Zero as they had last year. This year, the roll call was read by the children of those who died. Like last year, politics was banned, no speeches, no photo-ops. Mayor Michael Bloomberg disinvited Vice President Dick Cheney from ceremonies at Ground Zero because his security requirements were said to interfere with the families’ access. Instead, Cheney went uptown to Riverside Church for an afternoon service commemorating staff members of the Port Authority who died in the collapse of the Twin Towers.
A minute of silence at 8:46 a.m. was observed by some in the city, but not others. There were those who forgot the day, and those who forgot the time, even though no New Yorker could forget what happened: the blackout on August 14 immediately rekindled the fear of another terrorist attack. Two years after September 11, 2001, there is still much sorrow and grief (remains are still being found, and a Mass-the final one for a firefighter-was celebrated on September 9), but there is also a turn to routine and to ritualized observance. Perhaps this September 11 was like the second anniversary of JFK’s assassination, observed without an edge of shocked grief.
I remembered that it was September 11, but at 8:46 I was absorbed in other activities. Afterward I regretted my impiety. As the day wore on, however, I found I was not alone. Maybe it wasn’t impiety. Maybe it was a return to normal. The tribes of firefighters and police officers went their separate ways worshiping at their own altars. The police memorial, close to Ground Zero, was constructed in the mid-’90s. It is now the touchstone for the police who died on September 11; there were ceremonies there with the inevitable wailing bagpipes. Uptown at 100th Street, the 1912 memorial dedicated “to the heroic dead of the fire department” pictures a horse-drawn fire pumper racing to the rescue. The annual commemoration has been transferred to September 11, and this anniversary the neighborhood was inundated with firefighters in their plain blue dress uniforms. Many of them gathered later in the morning at Cannon’s Pub, the only place in the neighborhood that could still pass for Irish. Henry’s, the upscale bistro across the street, seemed to attract the officer corps with their distinctive white hats. Spilling out of the bars, and standing on the sidewalk with the inevitable bottle of beer (and without the requisite paper bag to disguise illegal public drinking), firefighters clustered in little groups cheerfully greeting one another and chatting.
As a civilian who watched the tragedy of 2001 from a safe distance, I never fail to think of my own uncle, a Chicago firefighter, burned so often that his skin had hardened and furrowed over the years. The temptation to stop and thank the firefighters in front of Cannon’s bar was tempered by their self-sufficient bearing. They seemed turned in-a tribe unto themselves. A smile had to do, and it was reciprocated by a blue-eyed, freckled face that seemed to catch my meaning.
This is also the neighborhood that since 2001 has been plastered with small flyers admonishing, “Not in Our Name.” They first appeared in October 2001 as the war in Afghanistan broke out. They reappeared with the war in Iraq. Presumably they are meant to repudiate the Bush administration’s use of September 11 to justify its version of the war on terrorism. Most Americans, if not all New Yorkers, have accepted the claim that there was a connection in the case of Afghanistan, but its use to justify war against Iraq has proved a stretch. Events since President George W. Bush announced “mission accomplished” have only increased the suspicion that the war on terror has not been contained but enlarged.
President Bush has wrapped himself in the mantle of September 11 along with the Republican Party, which will hold its presidential convention in New York over September 11, 2004. Perhaps the third anniversary will take on yet another coloration for the citizens of New York. What will those firefighters, police, and family members think when they have to share the day and the memory with a political party that’s consistently exploited the price paid in the lives of their friends and relatives? end
