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Silence fills void left by World Trade Center

 
Published May 31, 2002|Updated Sept. 3, 2005

Until Thursday, there was little room for silence at the World Trade Center. In the decades before its collapse, the streets echoed with the wanted bustle of its commerce; in the eight months after, with the haunting roar from the haul of its rubble and the hunt for remains.

But at 10:29 Thursday morning, after the tolling of bells and in the presence of thousands, silence took its proper place. A corner of the city became still, as a stretcher bearing the weight of no body was carried out of the swept-clean pit where the twin towers once stood, followed by a truck carting a 58-ton steel column, the last symbolic remnant of what was. About the only sounds were a drum's roll and an infant's cry.

The ceremony was not perfect because no ceremony for this could be: not when more than 2,800 people died here in the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, with no trace of more than half the victims yet to be found. Some people chafe at any pomp, no matter how well intentioned, while others do not have to visit a 16-acre hole to learn about voids.

But many other people, from hard-hatted workers in the pit to blue-suited officials in City Hall, wanted to mark the awesome completion of an awful task: the separation of human remains from 1.8-million tons of debris, and the delicate removal of both. They also sensed the psychological need to distinguish the future from the past, for once that last column left, ground zero became a site for construction, not recovery.

Before the ceremony, people pressed against a stretch of West Street that had to be rebuilt after Sept. 11. Bagpipers tested their instruments beside 90 West St., a landmark so damaged that it remains under protective netting. Reporters hustled down boarded-up Liberty Street, past closed storefronts that include the place where a makeshift mess hall once fed recovery workers round the clock.

Without context, the preceremony hubbub could have been for a happy parade; there were flags and cameras and souvenir hawkers. But the mood seemed awkward, as though teetering between sorrow and relief.

"I came here when the pile was 12 stories high, and now it's swept and I'm glad it's over," said Brian Lyons, a superintendent for Tully Construction Co., whose brother, firefighter Michael Lyons, died in the attack. Although it hurts him to know that the remains of many have not been found, he said: "I feel satisfied that we got every nook and cranny. When the trucks go out, that's closure for me."

But the fallout of Sept. 11 continues to run the emotional gamut. Some fire companies attended Thursday's ceremony; others, like Engine 235 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, chose a more private commemoration. The widows of the six men lost from their firehouse, including Battalion Chief Dennis Cross, came to the firehouse for breakfast and a prayer service.

Then there are those fed up with commemoration. "I'm staying away because I think they're turning it into this sick, cheeseball thing," said Deborah Anne Hagerty, whose sister, Karen, died in the attack. "All the ceremonies and pomp and circumstance. Every event is such an event. "We're taking the first girder down, we're taking the last girder down.' It's like, okay already."

Still, Hagerty's mother, Lena Whittaker, and stepfather, Linzee Whittaker, planned to attend. "They haven't found anything of her yet," said Linzee Whittaker, referring to Karen Hagerty. "So we still feel very strongly that that site represents, in large part, a final resting place for her."

For Karen Hagerty, for Dennis Cross and the other dead; for the thousands of friends and relatives; for the thousands of rescue and recovery workers; and for a city, the bells tolled. They clanged in four sets of five rings, the traditional signal for a fallen firefighter, at 10:29 a.m., the moment when the last tower collapsed 261 days earlier.

The command went out, and right hands everywhere snapped in salute. Then 15 people representing 12 agencies and groups _ the Fire Department, the Police Department, the crane operators, the families _ began carrying the stretcher slowly up a ramp leading out of the pit.

The stretcher, carrying a folded American flag, was placed in the hold of a Fire Department ambulance idling near the top of the ramp. Then a drum slowly beat against the hush as a group of bagpipers marched up the ramp, their pipes silent.

Last came the truck: a yellow cab pulling a flatbed, upon which rested Column No. 1,001 B of 2 World Trade Center, draped in black muslin and a U.S. flag. Those covers concealed the spray-painted farewells that decorated the steel column, including the numbers lost by the Fire Department (343), the Port Authority Police Department (37) and the New York Police Department (23).

The truck groaned its way up the ramp, stirring puffs of dirt beneath its wheels, as a single police officer, in formal dress, jogged beside it. When it reached the ambulance with no body, the truck paused, taps sounded, and five police helicopters passed overhead through airspace that was not there nine months ago.

The salutes dropped as the procession moved past a group of dignitaries _ senators, governors, a cardinal, a mayor, his predecessor _ with those who had formed the honor guard falling in behind. Then, just after the bagpipers had played America the Beautiful, the applause began, a sustained, almost defiant applause that sought to fill a rare silence