Today, people across the nation and world will stop to remember the thousands who died on 9/11, marking 10 years since the worst terror attack on U.S. soil.
Memorials mark 9/11 anniversary Nation gathers to mourn victims
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By Adam Geller The Associated Press
NEW YORK en years on, Americans come together Sunday where the World Trade Center soared, where the Pentagon stands as a fortress once breached, where United Airlines Flight 93 knifed into the earth. They will gather to pray in cathedrals in our greatest cities and to lay roses before fi re stations in our smallest towns, to remember in countless ways the anniversary of the most devastating terrorist attacks since the nation’s founding, and in the process, mark the milestone as history itself. As in earlier observances, bells will toll again to mourn the loss of those killed in the attacks. Americans will lay eyes on new memorials in lower Manhattan, rural Pennsylvania and elsewhere, concrete symbols of the resolve to remember and rebuild. But much of the weight of this year’s ceremonies lies in what will largely go unspoken — the anniversary’s role in prompting Americans to consider how the attacks changed them and the larger world and the continuing struggle to understand 9/11’s place in the lore of the nation. “A lot’s going on in the background,” said Ken Foote, author of “Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy,” examining the role that veneration of sites of death and disaster plays in modern life. “These anniversaries are particularly critical in figuring out what story to tell, in figuring out what this all means. “It forces people to fi gure out what happened to us,” he said. On Saturday in rural western SEE 10 YEARS | 6A
Fallen soldier
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Special section PHOTOS | (ABOVE) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS; (TOP) THE NEW YORK TIMES
ABOVE: From left, the Revs. Patrick J. Mahoney, Rob Schenk, Leon Ferguson and Timothy Mercaldo lead a prayer and song near the PATH Station at the World Trade Center site during a public ceremony as officials prepare for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York on Saturday. TOP: Firefighters grieve for their colleagues following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. When the towers fell, 343 firefighters and paramedics who responded were killed.
Local residents answered the call to help By Jason Morton Staff Writer
T USCALOOSA hile the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, thousands of people from across the country joined in the effort to help the country rebuild. After watching the planes hit the buildings, Tuscaloosa residents Skip Baumhower and Tim Martin loaded up a truckload of supplies and drove to New York City. The two longtime friends and members of the Presbyterian Church, said they realized the decision was rash, but believed it was influenced by grace. “It was like, simultaneously, we had this thought: If there was anything we could do to help, we wanted to go for it,” said Baumhower, a local photographer. “Usually, when you’re prompted
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that way, you can talk yourself out of it 3 seconds later.” Baumhower and Martin, the director of pharmacy at DCH Regional Medical Center, reached out to Skyye Womack, a photographer friend in Birmingham, and the three men hit the road headed for Manhattan. It took them 24 hours to gather resources and supplies. With the aid of Annette Shelby, wife of U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, they obtained a letter from the state’s Emergency Management Agency that attested to their validity as Americans who posed no security threat. That letter gained them passage through a roadblock at the Brooklyn Bridge and into the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Baumhower and Martin recalled walking to the edge of a railing that overlooked the devastation. Firefighters, police officers and other vol-
unteers were sifting through the rubble by hand and removing the debris in 5-gallon buckets. “Everything, at that point, was by hand,” Martin said. The men separated and took positions along different bucket brigades. Occasionally, a shout would rise from the crowd and the groups of volunteers would scatter — a “bug out,” they called it — when a large, plate glass window in a nearby building, shaken loose by the explosions, would come free and fall to the ground. They worked until they were exhausted that day, and for the seven more days they stayed in the city to perform similar tasks. In that time, they saw grown men give way to their emotions and consoled emergency workers overcome by the enormity and gravity of their work. Now, 10 years later, Martin and SEE H ELPING | 8A
Memories of 9/11 from local residents, victims’ families and government officials. Section I Tuscaloosa memorial What: “Remembrance & Reflection: The 10th anniversary of 9/11” ceremony Where: Tuscaloosa Amphitheater When: 6 tonight Admission: free and open to the public Details: Ceremony will include a tribute to victims, a presentation of colors by honor guards, performances by the Stillman College Choir, the Alabama Choir School and the Emerald Society.
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