Mourners gather in ground zero to remember 9/11 victims

NEW YORK – Mourners gathered in grief in lower Manhattan on Monday, hugging each other and fighting back tears as they commemorated their lost loved ones on the 22nd anniversary of Sept. 11.

Attendees of the ceremony honoring the victims of the worst terrorist attack on American soil sat in folding chairs and leaned against trees. Flute music filled the air while relatives of those who died read their names aloud, in a ritual that has been repeated for more than two decades.

Some wore T-shirts emblazoned with photos of their family members, while others carried posters or framed pictures. Many brought flowers and flags.

The families were joined at ground zero by a number of notable politicians, including Vice President Kamala Harris; Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York; New York City Mayor Eric Adams; and Bill de Blasio and Michael Bloomberg, Adams’ most immediate predecessors. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, also made a brief appearance.

Adams, who was a police lieutenant at the time of the attacks, told CBS News he had gone to ground zero that day and had been struck by the “eerie stillness.”

“The greatest thing about New York City in America was not what happened on 9/11, but what happened on 9/12,” he said. “We got up, teachers taught, builders built, and we continued to show that we were not going to bend or break.”

For Seaver and Sloane Lipshie, whose uncle John J. Tippington II was a firefighter killed in the attacks, Sept. 11 is a day spent either at his firehouse or at ground zero.

Seaver Lipshie, now 26, was only 4 years old the day her uncle died, and her older sister Sloane, now 28, was just 6.

They were at the ceremony supporting their mother, Maureen Tippington Lipshie, one of the people reading names, including her brother’s. She was a nurse who set up a first aid station at the Trade Center site.

The anniversary is “re-traumatizing” for the family each year, Sloane Lipshie said.

“The rest of the year, of course, you think about it occasionally,” she said. “But it’s hard to watch my mom suffer. It never changed for her.”

Twenty-two years later, the number of emergency workers with the Fire Department who died from illnesses related to the attacks almost exceeds the number of firefighters who died in the line of duty that day.

According to the Uniformed Firefighters Association, 341 firefighters, paramedics and other Fire Department employees have died from cancers and other illnesses linked to the toxic dust at ground zero. The number of firefighters who died on Sept. 11 was 343.

Betty Espinoza attended the ceremony with her sister and two friends. They sat by the South Pool and listened to the names being read from a loudspeaker hung on a nearby tree. Espinoza’s husband, Otto Espinoza, was a police officer who died of cancer in 2015 after working on search and rescue teams at ground zero.

The first few years attending the ceremony were very sad, Espinoza said, but in recent years she has tried to come to terms with what happened to her husband.

“I always remember him; I always think about him,” Espinoza said. “But this is the life I have to live now.”

This year’s anniversary came just three days after Adams and the city’s chief medical examiner announced that two additional victims had been identified, the 1,648th and 1,649th. They join a list of 60 others identified in recent years from remains recovered using advanced DNA testing.

“More than 20 years after the disaster, these two new identifications continue to fulfill a solemn pledge,” said Dr. Jason Graham, the medical examiner. “Faced with the largest and most complex forensic investigation in the history of our country, we stand undaunted in our mission to use the latest advances in science to serve this promise.”

The names of the victims, one man and one woman, were withheld because of their families’ wishes. More than 1,100 people – around 40% of the dead – remain unidentified, the mayor’s office said.

There were events across New York City on Monday to honor the anniversary, including vigils and speeches. At the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, more than 1,500 volunteers packaged jambalaya to be sent to local food pantries.

The effort was part of an initiative called “9/11 Day” that aimed to transform Sept. 11 from a day of tragedy to one of service. A co-founder, Jay Winuk, lost his brother, Glenn, in the attacks.

Glenn Winuk was a volunteer firefighter who was at home getting ready for work at Holland & Knight, the law firm where he was a partner, when he saw the first plane hit the North Tower on television. He ran to the scene and died trying to help evacuate his firm’s offices in the South Tower.

“For me, personally, it’s cathartic,” Jay Winuk, 65, said of the service day he helped create. “It’s a great tradition to hand off to the next generation, which is so important to us, because 100 million people in this country weren’t even born when 9/11 happened.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.