Somber Ceremony for Museum Dedication
Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
President
Obama on Thursday dedicated the long-awaited museum commemorating the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with a mournful elegy to the victims, a
stirring tribute to the heroes and a firm resolve to never let
terrorists shatter the spirit of America.
“No
act of terror can match the strength or the character of our country,”
Mr. Obama told a crowd that included family members of those slain and
other invited guests in the cavernous underground hall of the National
September 11 Memorial Museum. “Like the great wall and bedrock that
embrace us today,” he added, “nothing can ever break us. Nothing can
change who we are as Americans.”
The
president’s remarks highlighted a somber ceremony at the new
institution marking the worst foreign attack on American soil, one that
shocked the world and ushered in a new era of fear, war, determination
and clashes of values while redefining America’s place in the world.
Surrounded by the twisted and graffiti-inscribed steel remnants of New
York’s twin towers, the president and the other guests vowed never to
forget.
Interactive Feature: A New Story Told at Ground Zero
Former
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg played host for the event, joined by a
plethora of other major figures from the region, including Govs. Chris
Christie of New Jersey and Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, Mayor Bill de
Blasio of New York, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Gov.
George E. Pataki.
Outside,
flags were at half-staff on the memorial plaza, where bronze panels
bear the names of the nearly 3,000 people who perished in New York,
Northern Virginia and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, and in the bombing of
the World Trade Center in 1993.
Inside,
the event was held in the museum’s Foundation Hall, 70 feet beneath
ground level, at bedrock, with around 700 invited guests attending.
Mr.
Obama, solemn and quiet, used his remarks not to talk about the events
that followed that day, the wars he has tried to end and the policies he
has reshaped but continued. Instead, he focused on the victims who
perished in flames and smoke and those who tried to save them.
Obama Speaks at 9/11 Museum Dedication
President Obama delivered remarks at the dedication ceremony for the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City.
Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
“Here we tell their story, so that generations yet unborn will never forget, of co-workers who led others to safety,” he said.
He
singled out the heroism of a young man with a red bandanna who helped
save people in the south tower before it collapsed. His identity was
long unknown until months later when his mother read an article about
the mysterious savior with the red bandanna and recognized him. He was
Welles Crowther, 24.
“He
had a big laugh and a joy of life and dreams of seeing the world,” Mr.
Obama said. “He worked in finance, but he had also been a volunteer
firefighter. And after the planes hit, he put on that bandanna and spent
his final moments saving others.”
Joining
Mr. Obama for a tour of the museum before the ceremony were former
President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton. A spokesman for former President George W. Bush, who was in
office on the day of the attacks, said he was invited but could not make
it because of a scheduling conflict.
Video Feature: 9/11 Artifacts, and the Stories They Tell
Mr.
Obama’s remarks were crisp and short. He was given just three minutes
on the program, although he took nine, an unusually short speech for a
president at such a high-profile event. But he was not the main focus of
the day. In addition to the political figures, survivors and relatives
of victims told their stories in videos projected on the wall or from
the podium — including Alison Crowther, who was Mr. Crowther’s mother,
and Ling Young, who was among those he saved that day.
Eileen
Fagan, whose sister Patricia died on the 98th floor of the south tower,
also attended the ceremony. Some of her sister’s remains have been
identified, and she chose to leave part of them in a specially built
medical examiner’s repository at the site, which is separated from the
museum by a wall.
“Everyone
here can feel the presence of their loved one, in a very real way,” she
said. “I walked with Pat through the World Trade Center so many times
and I feel like I am walking with Pat again. It’s a good feeling, a
little bit sad, but a good feeling.”
As
for Mr. Obama, he was a state senator in Illinois on the day of the
attacks. In his book “The Audacity of Hope,” he recalled hearing about
the first plane hitting the tower while listening to the radio in a car
on the way to a legislative hearing in Chicago. By the time he arrived,
the second tower had been hit and the government office in Chicago was
evacuated.
De Blasio at 9/11 Museum Dedication
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York delivered
his remarks during the dedication ceremony in Foundation Hall at the
National September 11 Memorial Museum at ground zero.
Credit Pool photo by Richard Drew/Getty Images
“Up
and down the streets, people gathered, staring at the sky and at the
Sears Tower,” he wrote. “Later, in my law office, a group of us sat
motionless as the nightmare images unfolded across the TV screen.”
While
he was not seared by the experience in the same way as Mr. Bush, who
took from it a mission to tackle terrorism around the world and protect
America from any further attack, it fell to Mr. Obama to inherit the
wars that followed when he took over the Oval Office in 2009.
He
has spent the last five years trying to find what he considers the
right balance in the nation’s struggle with terrorism. He continued many
of Mr. Bush’s counterterrorism policies, including drone strikes in the
tribal regions of Pakistan and surveillance programs that have stirred
international controversy, and brought to a dramatic finish the global
manhunt for Osama bin Laden with a bold special forces raid that ended
in the death of bin Laden.
But
Mr. Obama has sought to move away from what he sees as a permanent,
all-consuming war on terror. He pulled all American troops from Iraq and
plans to pull nearly all from Afghanistan by the end of the year. And
yet many of his ideas for reshaping American national security have not
been brought to fruition, whether it be restricting the C.I.A.
involvement in drones or closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Mr.
Obama talked about none of that on Thursday. With Michelle Obama, Mr.
Bloomberg and the Clintons, he toured the exhibits beforehand, stopping
to stare at photographs of victims mounted on a wall, examining a
battered New York Fire Department ladder truck and passing a wall
engraved by a Virgil quote: “No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of
Time.”
He
called it “a profound and moving experience,” and he noted that one of
the items on display was a red bandanna that once belonged to Welles
Crowther.
“And
from this day forward,” Mr. Obama said, “all those who come here will
have a chance to know the sacrifice of a young man who, like so many,
gave his life so others might live.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered