Once more, the families gathered at ground zero, where 2,749 died, and in Washington and in Pennsylvania, paying tribute to the 224 who died there.
Once more, there was an outpouring of grief. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that the attacks had turned “a perfect blue-sky morning” into “the blackest of nights."
He added, “We can never unsee what happened here.”
President Obama read Psalm 46, which talks about God as “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble,” and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York read from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address, the famous “four freedoms” speech — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear “anywhere in the world.”
Former President George W. Bush quoted Abraham Lincoln on the casualties in the Civil War as Mr. Bush commemorated those who died on Sept. 11. “I pray that our heavenly father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement,” Mr. Bush read, quoting from a letter Lincoln wrote in 1864 to a mother whose five sons had died in the war.
“President Lincoln not only understood the heartbreak of his country, he also understood the cost to sacrifice and reached out to console those in sorrow,” Mr. Bush said.
There were also long moments of silence, first at 8:46 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 struck 1 World Trade Center, and again at 9:03 a.m., when United Airlines Flight 175 smashed into the other tower. Another silence — at ground zero and at the Pentagon — came at 9:37 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into what had been considered the unshakable nerve center of the world’s most powerful military.
