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| Photo Credit: AP. |
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans remembered 9/11 on Sunday with tear-choked tributes and pleas to “never forget,” 21 years after the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.
The loss
still feels immediate to Bonita Mentis, who wore a necklace with a photo of her
slain sister, Shevonne Mentis.
“It’s been
21 years, but it’s not 21 years for us. It seems like just yesterday,” she said
before reading victims’ names at the World Trade Center to a crowd that
included Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff. Mentis’
At the
Pentagon, which also was targeted on 9/11, President Joe Biden vowed that the
U.S. would continue working to root out terrorist plots and called on Americans
to stand up for “the very democracy that guarantees the right to freedom that
those terrorists on 9/11 sought to bury in the burning fire, smoke and ash.”
First lady Jill Biden spoke at the third attack site, a field near Shanksville,
Pennsylvania.
On Sept. 11,
2001, conspirators from the al-Qaida Islamic terror group seized control of
jets to use them as passenger-filled missiles, hitting the trade center’s twin
towers and the Pentagon. The fourth plane was headed for Washington but crashed
near Shanksville after crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit.
The attacks
killed nearly 3,000 people, reconfigured national security policy and spurred a
U.S. “war on terror” worldwide. Sunday’s observances came little more than a
month after a U.S. drone strike killed a key al-Qaida figure who helped plot
the 9/11 attacks, Ayman al-Zawahri.
Pierre
Roldan, who lost his cousin Carlos Lillo, a paramedic, said “we had some form
of justice” when a U.S. raid killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
“Now that
al-Zawahri is gone, at least we’re continuing to get that justice,” Roldan
said.
The
self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, still awaits
a long-postponed military tribunal. An attorney for one of Mohammed’s
co-defendants this week confirmed ongoing negotiations toward a potential
agreement to avoid a trial and impose lesser but still lengthy sentences.
The Sept. 11
attacks stirred — for a time — a sense of national pride and unity for many,
while also subjecting Muslim Americans to years of suspicion and bigotry and
engendering debate over the balance between safety and civil liberties. In ways
both subtle and plain, the aftermath of 9/11 ripples through American politics
and public life to this day.
But like
some other victims’ relatives, Jay Saloman fears that Americans’ consciousness
of 9/11 is receding.
“It was a
terrorist attack against our country that day. And theoretically, everybody
should remember it and, you know, take precautions and watch out,” said
Saloman, who lost his brother, Wayne Saloman.
By
tradition, no political figures speak at the ground zero ceremony. The
observance centers, instead, on relatives reading aloud the names of the dead.
Like a
growing number of readers, firefighter Jimmy Riches’ namesake nephew wasn’t
born yet when his relative died. But the boy took the podium to honor him.
“You’re
always in my heart. And I know you are watching over me,” he said.
Nikita Shah
wore a T-shirt that bore the de facto epigraph of the annual commemoration —
“never forget” — and the name of her father, Jayesh Shah. She was 10 when he
was killed.
The family
later moved to Houston but often returns to New York for the anniversary to be
“around people who kind of experienced the same type of grief and the same feelings
after 9/11,” said Shah.
Readers
often add personal remarks that form an alloy of American sentiments about
Sept. 11 — grief, anger, toughness, appreciation for first responders and the
military, appeals to patriotism, hopes for peace, occasional political barbs,
and a poignant accounting of the graduations, weddings, births and daily lives
that victims have missed. A few readers note recent events, this year ranging
from the still ongoing coronavirus pandemic to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Some
relatives also lament that a nation which came together — to some extent —
after the attacks has since splintered apart. So much so that federal law
enforcement and intelligence agencies, which were reshaped to focus on
international terrorism after 9/11, now see the threat of domestic violent
extremism as equally urgent.
“It took a tragedy
to unite us. It should not take another tragedy to unite us again,” said Andrew
Colabella, whose cousin, John DiGiovanni, died in the 1993 bombing World Trade
Center bombing that presaged 9/11.
Beyond the
attack sites, communities around the country marked the day with candlelight
vigils, interfaith services and other commemorations. Some Americans joined in
volunteer projects on a day that is federally recognized as both Patriot Day
and a National Day of Service and Remembrance.
Others
observed the anniversary with their own reflections.
More than 70
of Sekou Siby’s co-workers perished at Windows on the World, the restaurant
atop the trade center’s north tower. He had the day off because another cook
asked him to switch shifts.
The Ivorian
immigrant wrestled with how to comprehend such horror in a country where he’d
come looking for a better life. And Siby, now president of restaurant workers’
advocacy group ROC United, said ahead of the anniversary that the attacks made
him wary of becoming attached to people when “you have no control over what’s
going to happen to them next.”
“Every 9/11 is a reminder,” he said, “of what I lost that I can never recover.”
Associated
Press journalists Colleen Long in Washington and Dave Collins in Hartford,
Connecticut, contributed.