Tag Archives: Memorial

Families remember 9/11 victims 15 years after attacks

Honor guard observing silence for 9/11

By Melissa Fares

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Americans remembered the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on Sunday at a ceremony marking 15 years, with the recital of their names, tolling church bells and a tribute in lights at the site where New York City’s massive twin towers collapsed.

As classical music drifted across the 9/11 Memorial plaza in lower Manhattan, family members and first responders slowly read the names and delivered personal memories of the almost 3,000 victims killed in the worst attack on U.S. soil since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Relatives in the crowd embraced and some held photos of loved ones and signs that read: “Never to be forgotten,” “We miss you,” and “Gone too soon.”

Tom Acquarviva’s 29-year-old son Paul was one of 658 employees of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald who perished after the first plane struck the north tower just below where they worked on the 101st to 105th floors.

“Not a day goes by that we don’t remember him,” Acquarviva told Reuters.

Angela Checo honored her brother, Pedro Francisco, 35, who was a vice president at investment and wealth manager Fiduciary Trust on the 96th floor of the south tower.

“He was coming down but forgot someone and went back upstairs to save them,” Checo said. “That’s why he never made it down.”

The ceremony paused for six moments of silence: four to mark the exact times four hijacked planes were crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon near Washington D.C., and a Pennsylvania field. The last two record when the North and South towers of the Trade Center crumpled.

It was held by two reflecting pools with waterfalls that now stand in the towers’ former footprints, and watched over by an honor guard of police and firefighters.

More than 340 firefighters and 60 police were killed on the that sunny Tuesday morning in 2001. Many of the first responders died while running up stairs in the hope of reaching victims trapped on the towers’ higher floors.

“PIECE OF THEIR HEART”

At the Pentagon, a trumpet played as U.S. President Barack Obama took part in a wreath-laying ceremony.

“Fifteen years may seem like a long time. But for the families who lost a piece of their heart that day, I imagine it can seem like just yesterday,” Obama said.

No public officials spoke at the New York ceremony, in keeping with a tradition that began in 2012. But many dignitaries attended, including Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Trump said in a statement that it was a day of sadness and remembrance, but also of resolve.

“Our solemn duty on behalf of all those who perished … is to work together as one nation to keep all of our people safe from an enemy that seeks nothing less than to destroy our way of life,” Trump said.

Clinton said in a statement that the horror of Sept. 11, 2001 would never be forgotten, and paid tribute to the victims and first responders.

She fell ill after about 90 minutes at the service, becoming “overheated,” aides said, and was taken to her daughter Chelsea’s apartment in Manhattan. She emerged later and told reporters she was “feeling great.”

TRIBUTE IN LIGHT

Houses of worship throughout the city had tolled their bells at 8:46 a.m. EDT (1246 GMT), the time American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower.

A second pause came at 9:03 a.m. (1303 GMT), when United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower. American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. (1337 GMT), then the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. (1359 GMT).

At 10:03 a.m. (1403 GMT) United Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the final moment of silence was observed at 10:28 a.m. (1428 GMT) when the North Tower fell.

As evening falls across New York City on Sunday, scores of 7,000-watt xenon light bulbs will project two giant beams of blue light into the night sky to represent the fallen twin towers, fading away at dawn.

The “Tribute in Light” was first set up in 2002, six months after the attacks, and has become part of the annual memorial service. The beams reach four miles (6.4 km) into the sky and can be seen as far as 60 miles (96.6 km) away on a clear night, organizers say.

In the twin towers’ place now rises the 104-story 1 World Trade Center. Also known as the Freedom Tower, it is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, at 1,776 feet (541 meters). Fifteen years after the attack, the U.S. government marked its return to the site on Friday, moving its New York City offices there.

Nineteen hijackers died in the attack, later claimed by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, which led directly to the U.S. war in Afghanistan and indirectly to the invasion of Iraq.

In Kabul, the top American commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, paid tribute to members of the NATO-led coalition and Afghan security forces who had been killed since the Taliban regime fell.

But in an address which touched on his own experience as an officer in Afghanistan, stretching back a decade, he also underlined how far from peace the country remains.

“As we know, sadly, the number of terrorist groups has only grown since 9/11,” he said. “Of the 98 groups now designated globally, 20 are in this region, the Afpak region.”

(Reporting by Melissa Fares; Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati in Washington and James Mackenzie in Kabul; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Mary Milliken and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Sorrow, selfies compete at New York’s 9/11 memorial 15 years on

9/11 Memorial

By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The memorial in New York City at the site where the Twin Towers fell in the Sept. 11 attacks 15 years ago straddles two worlds: one of the living and one of the dead.

A marker for where more than 2,600 people were killed, it attracts tourists from around the world. Some are drawn there to pause and reflect, others to satisfy a morbid fascination with the site of the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941.

Clutching cell phones, cameras and selfie sticks, visitors generally take their time around the National September ll Memorial Museum. They are expected to turn out in droves on Sunday for the 9/11 anniversary.

More than 23 million people have seen the memorial and 4 million have been to the museum since they were opened five years ago, leaving some local people thinking the significance of the site as a place for mourning is fading.

Rosanne Hughes’ husband died on Sept. 11, 2001, while he was on a work visit at the Windows on the World restaurant high in the World Trade Center’s North Tower.

Now a board member of the New Jersey 9/11 Memorial Foundation, she said it was hard for victims’ relatives to sometimes see insensitive or even rude behavior at the plaza in Lower Manhattan.

“It’s very disrespectful for people to go there and take selfies and smile for the cameras and in the background is where the towers collapsed,” Hughes said.

“I saw people with their kids running around, you know laughing, having fun. I guess people just don’t understand that it’s just not that type of museum.”

Early on that bright Tuesday morning in 2001, two hijacked planes were slammed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center. A third plane was flown into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and a fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

MELANCHOLIC MUSEUM

The memorial and museum, which cost more than $700 million to build, feature twin pools with waterfalls, each covering nearly an acre. The pools stand in the footprints of the towers.

Flanking the pools are platforms dotted with Swamp white oak trees and ivy beds. The names of every person who died in the 9/11 attacks are inscribed on bronze panels that rim the pools.

Coins glistened from the inner ledges of the pools, sharing space with paper napkins, bottle caps and even a plastic coffee cup one recent Sunday.

A security guard, who declined to give his name, said that during patrols he had to ask children to not sit on the names of the dead and stopped adults from stubbing out cigarettes on them.

The mood inside the museum, beneath “Ground Zero,” is more solemn, its 110,000 square feet bearing witness to the attacks. People’s identification cards, blood-stained shoes, photographs of fathers, wives, brothers and co-workers, intimate stories of loss and recovery tell the story.

Outside once again, Hughes said it was upsetting to see hotdog vendors and souvenir stands near the memorial.

“We still have anger over what happened too, and we’ve moved forward from that. But this is something that just doesn’t go away,” she said.

“It may be a photo-op for them but for us it is still very painful to watch.”

Kenneth T. Jackson, a New York City historian and professor at Columbia University, said the attacks made the World Trade Center the most famous place in the world, and he believes visitors instantly realize its significance.

“It now joins the long list of New York City tourist attractions and, for better or worse, it is one,” he said. “Even if there was no memorial, even if they left some broken stuff there, people would visit.”

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Toni Reinhold)

France buries priest murdered by Islamist militants

Picture of slain French priest

By Antony Paone

ROUEN, France (Reuters) – Mourners crammed into Rouen Cathedral on Tuesday for the funeral of the Roman Catholic priest knifed to death at his church altar, as France’s political leaders sought ways to defeat home-grown Islamist violence.

Father Jacques Hamel was leading morning mass in the nearby industrial town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray last Tuesday when the attackers stormed in, forced the 85-year-old to his knees and slit his throat while chanting in Arabic.

Amid tight security at the thirteenth century gothic cathedral in northern France, a procession of senior clergy followed pallbearers who carried Hamel’s coffin through the “Door of Mercy” and placed it on an ornate rug before the altar.

The priest’s sister, Roselyne Hamel, told the congregation how during his military service in Algeria her brother had refused an officer’s rank so as not give the order to kill, and how he once emerged the sole survivor in a desert shootout.

“He would often ask himself: ‘Why me?’ Today, Jacques, our brother, your brother, you have your answer: Our God of love and mercy chose you to be at the service of others,” she said.

The service was to be followed by a private burial.

Hamel’s murder by French citizens was the first Islamist attack on a church in western Europe and came just 12 days after a Tunisian who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State drove his truck through a crowd of Bastille Day revelers in the Riviera city of Nice, killing 84.

Islamist militants have killed more than 200 people in France since January 2015.

Facing strong criticism from right-wing opponents over its security record, the Socialist government has warned of a long war against militant Islam at home and abroad in places such as Iraq, Syria and Libya.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said the state must reinvent its relationship with the “Islam of France”. France’s Muslim minority, the European Union’s largest, makes up about 8 percent of the population.

URGENCY

Since the 1980s, successive governments have tried to nurture a liberal Islam that would better integrate the faith into French society.

Meanwhile, the Muslim community, riven by divisions and power politics, has struggled to oppose radical Salafist groups that have established their presence in some mosques and neighborhoods as well as on the Internet.

Valls wants to ban foreign funding for mosques and says all French imams should be trained in France. His interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said that a foundation that would enable the secular state to finance cultural centers linked to places of worship would be established by the end of the year.

“We must guard against being paternalistic but we must have the lucidity to recognize that there is an urgency to helping ‘Islam of France’ get rid of those that undermine it from within,” Valls told the weekly Journal du Dimanche.

Some Islamic leaders have expressed doubts over the government’s plans.

“It’s on the internet that radicalisation takes place, not in the mosques,” Moroccan-born Tareq Oubrou, a leading moderate imam from Bordeaux, told BFM TV. “We mustn’t kid ourselves.”

Cazeneuve, whose portfolio includes religious affairs, said on Monday that the Socialist government had shut down about 20 mosques and prayer halls in recent months and that more closures would follow based on intelligence in hand.

(Additional reporting and writing by Richard Lough in Paris; Editing by Andrew Callus and Robin Pomeroy)

U.S. leaders seek unity at vigil for slain Louisiana officers

police saluting the caskets of fallen police officers

By Sam Karlin

BATON ROUGE, La. (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Loretta Lynch called for unity to honor three slain Louisiana police officers, speaking at a memorial service on Thursday in Baton Rouge where they were gunned down this month by a U.S. Marine Corps veteran.

Several hundred people and dozens of law enforcement officers attended the vigil, where Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards also implored the community to seek peace and healing after the July 17 attack that also wounded three other officers.

The shootings came amid a series of deadly encounters igniting debate over policing and minorities in the United States. The killings rattled a city already grappling with protests after the fatal police shooting on July 5 of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man confronted by officers while selling CDs outside a convenience store.

Biden said he heard that Sterling’s aunt, who raised him, had prayed with a slain officer’s father.

“Loss is loss is loss,” he said, speaking at a church in Baton Rouge, the state capital. “Now the city has to reach out, the country has to reach out to law enforcement, and let you know how much we care.”

On the stage behind him, three chairs sat empty, decorated with sashes and uniform caps representing the officers.

Choking back tears, two of the officers’ wives recalled phone calls and door knocks on an initially normal Sunday morning that changed their lives forever.

Slain Baton Rouge police officers Matthew Gerald, 41, and Montrell Jackson, 32, and East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Deputy Brad Garafola, 45, were killed in what Louisiana officials described as a calculated attack. Shooter Gavin Long, 29, a black former Marine with ties to an African-American anti-government group, was also killed in an exchange of gunfire.

“No family should ever have to be without their loved ones, especially when these three heroes could be home had a person not been filled with so much hatred,” said Tonja Garafola.

Jackson’s wife, Trenisha, recalled his wish to see healing in the city and directed the crowd to repeat sentiments that he had posted on Facebook in the tense days before his death.

“I will not let hate infect my heart,” the crowd repeated.

The assault followed the deaths of five officers in Dallas, Texas on July 7, who were shot by another black former U.S. serviceman. President Barack Obama traveled to Dallas in the wake of those shootings.

One of the wounded Louisiana officers, Nicholas Tullier, 41, remains hospitalized in critical condition, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office said on Thursday. At the vigil, Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said he is “fighting for his life.”

(Writing by Letitia Stein; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and James Dalgleish)

Bikers ride through Baton Rouge in support of fallen police

Several hundred bikers gathered in Baton Rouge on Tuesday and rode in a procession to the city’s police headquarters in a show of support for the policemen shot and killed by a gunman at the weekend.

The bikers, many carrying U.S. flags and revving their engines, rode past the gas station where the policemen where killed en route to the police station.

Spectators gathered on the side of the streets to cheers them on. One woman carried a banner reading ‘cops lives matter.’

President Barack Obama has told law enforcement officials that Americans recognize, respect and depend upon the difficult and dangerous work they do, a rallying call of support following the ambush killings of eight officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

Three police officers were gunned down in Louisiana’s state capital on Sunday by a U.S. Marine Corps veteran with ties to an African-American anti-government group, authorities said. On July 7, another former U.S. serviceman espousing militant black nationalist views killed five Dallas officers.

Authorities identified the Baton Rouge gunman as former Sergeant Gavin Long of Kansas City, Missouri, an Iraq war veteran, and said he seemed determined to slay as many police officers as possible before a SWAT team marksman cut short his attack.

The single gunshot that killed Long, 29, was fired by an officer from about 100 yards away, police have said as they deepened their investigation into the second racially charged armed assault on U.S. law enforcement this month.

Memorial To Teacher Threatened By Anti-Christianists

The anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation wants to destroy a monument to a beloved teacher because they cannot stand her Christian faith being referenced in the memorial.

Ravenswood Middle School in West Virginia has a monument to Joann Christy, a 26-year educators who died in a car accident.  The memorial had bench, two stone planters and several crosses to represent her deep Christian beliefs.

“There’s so many kids that came through this school that were affected by her death, that were affected by her teachings, and now we’re just trying to keep her memory alive here,” Tracy Sadecky, a family friend, told a local TV station.

The family of the late teacher agreed to have the crosses removed in an attempt to appease the hate group, but left angels saying that Christy had a collection of angels and the angels represented her.

North Carolina City’s Officials Bow To Anti-Christianists

City leaders in King, North Carolina are removing a memorial to veterans because of threats from anti-Christianist Barry Lynn and the anti-Christian hate group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

In 2012, the anti-Christian group filed suit against the city because of a memorial that showed a soldier kneeling before a cross.  The group said they were acting on behalf of Steven Hewitt, a local veteran.

“The United States Armed Forces are highly diverse,” Lynn told the Stokes News. “To have a veterans’ memorial that only honors soldiers of one religion is not only a violation of the First Amendment, but also an insult to the memory of non-Christians who served their country.”

“I proudly served alongside a diverse group of soldiers with a variety of different religious beliefs,” Hewitt added in a news release last November. “The City of King should be honoring everyone who served our country, not using their service as an excuse to promote a single religion.”

The city council voted 3-2 to agree to a settlement with the anti-Chrsitianists, stating they didn’t want to continue spending tax dollars to fight the attempts to remove Christians from society.

“The decision to settle this case has been very difficult for the King city council,” a statement from the city outlines. “It was not reached until it became clear that the costs of proceeding to trial would greatly exceed the city’s insurance policy limits.”

Anti-Christianist Forces College Football Team To Stop Honoring Fallen Classmates

A cross that was placed on the helmets of Arkansas State University football helmets to remember two fallen classmates is being removed after anti-Christianists demanded they be removed.

The helmets had the initials of ASU player Markel Owens, who had been murdered in a January home invasion along with equipment manager Barry Weyer who died in a car accident this year.

“My job is to support our players and our coaches in their expression of any type of grief, and that’s what I was doing,” athletics director Terry Mohajir told USA Today Sports. “It is unfortunate, and I am disappointed. However, we’re also going to uphold whatever legal advice we got, and that’s what we did based on the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. That’s what we were told we needed to do. So that’s what we did.”

Jonesboro, Arkansas attorney Louis Nisenbaum is the man who wanted to prohibit the players from honoring their fallen classmates and make sure that the Christian emblem was removed from being seen in public.

The virulent anti-Christian group Freedom From Religion Foundation, which strives to remove Christians from society, called the move “great news.”

Indiana Governor Vows To Defend Veterans’ Memorial

The governor of Indiana has said he will defend a veterans memorial in a state park that contains a small cross.

“So long as I am governor, I will defend the right of Hoosiers to display this sculpture in Whitewater Memorial State Park as a lasting tribute to the service and sacrifice of all who have worn the uniform of the United States,” Governor Mike Pence said in a statement.

The anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a threatening letter last month to the director of Indiana’s Department of Natural Resources saying that the existence of the cross on the monument was a government endorsement of Christianity.

“I fully support the decision by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to accept the sculpture commissioned by local citizens to honor all who have fallen in service to our country,” Governor Pence said. “The freedom of religion does not require freedom from religion. The Constitutions of our state and nation more than allow the placement of this Hoosier artist’s sculpture on public land.”

Supporters of the cross say if it’s offensive to an atheist just to see the cross there, it’s just as offensive to a Christian or any other people of faith to have no symbols there that endorses an atheistic belief system.

Anti-Christianists Target Indiana Veterans Memorial

A virulent anti-Christian organization is targeting a veteran’s memorial at an Indiana park because it contains a 14-inch tall cross.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent a letter to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources demanding the removal of the cross from the 8-foot-tall statue located in Whitewater Memorial State Park.

“No secular purpose, no matter how sincere, will detract from the overall message that the Latin cross stands for Christianity and the overall display promotes Christianity,” attorney Rebecca Markert wrote on behalf of the anti-Christian group.  “[The cross means] the government only cares about the deaths of Christian soldiers.”

The cross is part of a wooden chainsaw-carved statue that reads “all gave some; some gave all.”

A man who is an Army veteran initially complained about the cross being a part of the tribute.

“I just thought that a memorial to veterans in a veterans’ park didn’t need to be turned into a religious shrine,” Wendell Bias told a local newspaper, despite the fact no worship services have been held at the site.