9/11 Anniversary Is Marked Under Tearful Sky

In dress uniforms of blue, gray, and green, the first responders who rushed to the World Trade Center site on September 11, 2001 called out the names of the victims they were unable to save on that day six years ago.

It was the first time the firefighters, police officers, emergency workers, and others, some who barely escaped death themselves, have been asked to read the list of 2,750 victims.

It was also the first time the anniversary has fallen on a Tuesday, the same day of the attacks, and the first time it was held away from the ground zero site.

Some mourners protested the decision to move the ceremony from the site, which the mayor had said was necessary because of the construction going on there.

Instead, the pit, with one lone crane rising from the hole in the skyline where the twin towers once stood, acted as the backdrop for a stage set up in a park across the street.

As a compromise, mourners were able to file down into the site throughout the four-hour ceremony to drop flowers in a temporary reflecting pool.

Hundreds of family members and friends of the victims had gathered in the park by 8:40 a.m., when the ceremony opened with the unfurling of a torn American flag salvaged from ground zero.

Under a heavy gray sky that at times gave way to pelting rain, the mourners alternately lifted up photos of their loved ones and umbrellas. A children's choir, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, sang the national anthem, and four moments of silence marked the times when the two planes hit the towers and when the two towers collapsed.

"On that day we felt isolated, but not for long, and not from each other," Mayor Bloomberg said, sounding a theme of togetherness that each speaker, including Governor Spitzer, touched on.

"Six years have passed, and our place is still by your side," the mayor said.

Mayor Giuliani, who is running for president with a campaign that often refers to his performance on September 11, 2001, also took the stage to read a passage from Eli Wiesel.

"It was a day with no answers, but with an unending line of people who came forward to help one another," Mr. Giuliani said in brief remarks.

His attendance raised some concerns about the ceremony becoming politicized. A brief scuffle erupted as a mourner waiting in line to visit the pit reportedly called the former mayor "scum" as he was walking away from the site, according to an Associated Press reporter.

Firefighters and other first responders have also been among the critics of the rapid ground zero cleanup led by the former mayor, with some blaming the toxic dust for making them sick.

Ceremonies were also held at the sites where two other hijacked airplanes crashed on that day — the Pentagon, where 184 people died, and in a Pennsylvania field, where 40 people died.

By the end of the New York ceremony, the rain had slowed to a trickle and only a few dozen mourners remained huddled together as trumpeters began to play Taps.

Among them was Maria Vargas, 57, who walked alone hugging a pink rose to her chest. She moved to Queens from Bolivia to live by herself after her husband, David Vargas, died during the attacks.

She said she did not feel lonely.

"There are some people who feel that ground zero has the spirit of the people who died there. I share that belief," she said in Spanish. "I came today and felt satisfied, because I felt the soul of my husband."