At 9/11 memorial ceremony, a focus on loss before tension

New York: Thousands of relatives of the 9/11  dead gathered in a park near ground zero on Saturday morning for the ninth annual reading of their names as a nation debated whether a mosque and Islamic community center should be built near ground zero and a president pleaded for religious tolerance.

They filled a makeshift plaza in Zuccotti Park, beside a construction site sprouting cranes and American flags where 4 World Trade Center is rising, carrying cups of coffee and bouquets of flowers, wearing the sweatshirts and T-shirts and ball caps of the Port Authority police and the New York State emergency medical technicians and the New York Fire and Police Departments and many other agencies.

And on another crystal-clear September morn, a few degrees cooler than the one engraved on a city's heart, they held aloft posters and photos of the departed whose captions told the story of that day and of this one.

Angel Luis Jarbe Jr.: "Always in our hearts." Lt. Philip S. Petti, FDNY: "Remembering."

James V. DeBlase Jr.: "Where are OUR rights?" Joon Koo Kang: "We love you!! Islam mosque 'right next to ground zero??? We should stop this!!"

From the stage, however, the ceremony kept strictly to remembrance and steered clear of politics.

"No other public tragedy has cut our city so deeply," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said moments before a firefighter rang a silver bell at 8:47 a.m., marking the moment the first plane hit the first tower.

"No other place is as filled with our compassion, our love and our solidarity," Mr. Bloomberg said. "It is with the strength of these emotions, as well as the concrete, glass and steel that is brought in day by day, that we will build on the footprints of the past the foundation of the future."

After the mayor spoke, pairs of readers, some poised, some tearful, took turns reading a dozen or so names apiece - one reader was a victim's son or daughter or widow, the other an ironworker or architect or electrician on the mammoth project to rebuild the area.

Periodically, other politicians ascended the stage and offered brief readings. Chris Christie of New Jersey read Langston Hughes's eight-line poem "Dreams." Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani recited the conclusion of Tennyson's Ulysses: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

The vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., read a poem by Longfellow called "The Builders."

"Make the house, where Gods may dwell / Beautiful, entire, and clean. / Else our lives are incomplete."

But mostly, the morning belonged to the victims and the simple litany of their names - 2,752 were to be read out, and they flowed unstoppably from the mouths of those who mourned them yet.

An older woman burst into tears as she finished her reading. "Let today never ever be a national holiday. Let it be forever somber."

Nearby in a circular pool, weeping women in funeral dress and sunglasses, men in uniform, and children in T-shirts emblazoned with photographs of smiling faces dropped in roses, one for each name, until the sharp blue sky reflected in the pool was blotted out by a carpet of bloom

At 9:03, the bell was rung again to signal the moment the plane struck the south tower. In the silence that followed, a sparrow twittered. The muffled roar of traffic reached the plaza. Police officers on the roof of the building across the street scanned the skies with binoculars.

Before the ceremony began, even amid the hugs and tears, the divisions were apparent.

Around 7:25 a.m., as a choir finished up "The Star-Spangled Banner" and families trickled  in to the plaza, a blond woman faced the media riser and held up a photograph of a woman with short brown hair.

"Today is ONLY about my sister and the other innocents killed nine years ago," read the text beside it.

As the cameras snapped, the woman began to cry. An older man came over and gave her a hug. She said something about the impossibility of closure, and he told her, "I know exactly how you feel."

As it turned out, the woman's sister was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the north tower, where the man's wife and niece were working.

Then the woman, Alyson Low, 39, a children's librarian in Fayetteville, Ark., explained what she meant by her sign.

"I'm tired of talking about everything else, tired of the politics," she said. "Today is only about loss."

For the man, Nick Chiarchiaro, it wasn't.

After he told the story of his last morning with his wife before she went off to work at Fred Alger Management on 93rd floor of the north tower, Mr. Chiarchiaro, 67, a designer of fire alarm systems, segued into the other topic of the day.

"A mosque is built on the site of a winning battle," Mr. Chiarchiaro said. "They are symbols of conquest. Hence we have a symbol of conquest here? I don't think so."

Hours later, after the sun had cleared the skyline and flooded the plaza, the reciting of the names continued. Each bereaved reader finished his or her list with the name of the loved one lost. A boy named Joseph Scparta read out his complement and concluded, "and my uncle, Firefighter Leonard Ragaglia."

A man named Roman Gertsberg read out the name of his daughter, Marina Gertsberg. "May God bless you," he said.

After Geraldine Halderman made it through her list, her voice thickened for the final name.

"And my son, my hero, Fire Lieut. David Halderman," she said, bursting into tears. "I love you forever, Dave. Watch over us."