Ground zero: A selfie stop for some, a cemetery for others

3 years ago 263

NEW YORK – Twenty years aft terrorists flew 2 planes into the World Trade Center, the memorial astatine crushed zero has its ain routine, not overmuch antithetic from galore metropolis tourer sites.

Visitors from astir the satellite travel and go. They drawback selfies arsenic they browse the astir 3,000 names engraved into the parapets that framework 2 reflecting pools. Docents springiness tours. Tourists glimpse astatine their watches, decipher subway maps and cheque disconnected a box. Then they leave.

But for those who unrecorded and enactment adjacent to the memorial, the tract is some a portion of their regular daily and hallowed ground. The names connected the parapets are much than specified engravings connected bronze, and the 55,000 gallons of h2o recycling done the reflecting pools is much than a societal media post. It is simply a changeless reminder of that infamous day. It is simply a cemetery.

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After the plaza empties astir the reflecting pools each evening, Kevin Hansen pulls connected bluish enactment gloves, grabs his torch and begins his nightly enactment of repairing and maintaining the long, bronze parapets with the names of the dead.

Hansen was 8 and successful simple schoolhouse connected Long Island successful 2001.

“You conscionable retrieve everyone getting telephone calls and teachers not knowing what was going on. And past parents were coming to schoolhouse to prime kids up,” helium said.

Of his work, Hansen says, “It’s important to me."

"This is simply a motion that we each came unneurotic backmost successful 2001. This is my giveback of patriotism and this (event) cannot beryllium forgotten,” helium said. “I judge this spot brings radical to spot that determination is evil successful the world, but it tin beryllium overcome."

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While patrolling his bushed astir the World Trade Center, NYPD serviceman Mike Dougherty keeps an attentive oculus connected the memorial, often cleaning grime from the parapets and answering questions for tourists.

“If we spot thing connected the sheet we’ll marque definite to hitch it off, and I spot their names and I’ll interaction them. I’m present looking implicit them, basically. Try to relay that to radical that don’t recognize what this is each about," helium said.

“I get that, a batch of questions sometimes, you know: ‘What is this area?’ And I don’t instrumentality discourtesy to it. I similar explaining to them wherever the buildings stood. What this is each about. Just to support the representation of everyone successful your beingness erstwhile you archer idiosyncratic who doesn’t person that connection.”

The 25-year NYPD seasoned started arsenic an apprentice electrician moving wrong the World Trade Center earlier becoming a constabulary officer. He was connected patrol successful Brooklyn erstwhile the planes deed the towers.

When helium patrols the memorial plaza now, helium sometimes stops successful his tracks.

“I’ll conscionable beryllium walking astir the broadside oregon successful 1 of the peculiar information pools, and sometimes thing volition conscionable deed me. I conscionable commencement staring retired astatine the plaza. So, I’ll instrumentality a mates of minutes to constitute myself."

“It’s a privilege to beryllium here. I’m astatine the extremity of my career, towards the extremity of it anyway. And I couldn’t deliberation of a amended spot for maine to decorativeness up," helium said.

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After moving to Battery Park City successful 1998, the World Trade Center was a portion of Joan Mastropaolo’s regular life. She not lone lived crossed the street, but besides worked 2 blocks eastbound of the duplicate towers and shopped successful the promenade below.

“It was my beforehand lawn. Every clip I walked retired of my flat gathering and I crossed over, I came done the World Trade Center,” she said.

But connected the greeting of Sept. 11, 2001, “This vibrant assemblage became thing successful a substance of 102 minutes.”

“After everything happened here, I was wholly unopen retired from this concern for a mates of years. I wasn’t a rescue betterment idiosyncratic oregon a volunteer. So, I couldn’t get connected the site, and I felt similar a large portion of my beingness was robbed from me,” she said. “When they started bringing the trees backmost to this site, for me, that was a awesome of returning beingness backmost to the site.”

Mastropaolo present volunteers arsenic a docent astatine the 9/11 Tribute Museum, wherever she fixed much than 800 walking tours.

"I effort to explicate to them the magnitude of the loss.”

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Michael Keene has been an proprietor of O’Hara’s Restaurant and Pub for 35 years. A fashionable watering spread for firefighters astatine a presumption a artifact distant and for country bureau workers, O’Hara’s unopen down for 7 months aft the attacks.

Its clientele changed erstwhile it reopened, becoming fashionable with crews moving astatine crushed zero. Keene present inactive offers Guinness connected pat to the firefighters. Visitors to the memorial besides predominant his pub.

“It’s peculiar now, due to the fact that the radical that travel implicit to the tract aft they’ve gone done the museum, and it’s pugnacious to spell done the museum. People that travel implicit present are precise respectful. And conscionable to beryllium successful a spot that was destroyed past and rebuilt, you know, determination is thing peculiar astir that.”

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When the plaza astir the reflecting pools closes, James Maroon dons waders and a headlamp and begins the deliberate task of vacuuming the floors of the elephantine fountains.

“We effort and marque it a spot wherever radical judge their families are being watched and taken attraction of,” said Maroon, an technologist for the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

In 2001, Maroon was moving astatine the New York Mercantile Exchange conscionable westbound of the World Trade Center. He was crossing West Street erstwhile the archetypal level hit. Maroon knew galore of the brokers who died successful the attacks.

"Sometimes erstwhile we’re extracurricular I look astatine the sheet that their names are on. And 1 of them, Elkin Yuen, his girl was owed to beryllium born. Now she’s going to beryllium 20 years old. And ne'er met her father.”

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For much AP sum of the 9/11 day from New York and astir the globe, sojourn our hub astatine https://apnews.com/hub/9-11-a-world-changed.

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