On one corner of Church Street across from the smoldering wreckage of two 110-story buildings, the street sign dangled precariously, much like faith itself. Daily tallies splashed across the pages of the city’s newspapers with the grace of a tornado, reminding us of the dead and the missing. The number was, and remains, too high to conceive. All of us – those directly affected or those emotionally attached – have shed more than one tear for the lost, more than one tear for the found and more than one tear for the unknown that has become the future.

Within minutes after United Airlines Flight 175 struck the south tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, off-duty police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians were making their way through a labyrinth of roadblocks and traffic congestion into Manhattan to help out in any way possible. The attack of this second plane, preceded by the crash of American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower, dismissed any doubt that a terrorist attack was underway in the greatest city in the world.

Three years since the attacks, the city has become a different place than it was on September 10, 2001. For a short while, it was no longer as important what Jennifer Lopez was wearing, what Susan Sarandon was saying, or whom George Clooney was dating. The heroes of Yankee and Shea stadiums took a backseat to the heroes of police stations and firehouses, blue-collar workers who cut their own lawns and sit in traffic on the Long Island Expressway just like everyone else.

Mike Piazza, king of the Mets, wore a crown not of gold but of blue cloth, embroidered with four bold letters: NYPD. New York City police officers, long held in disregard by a small group of vocal citizens, had to become accustomed to a grateful public stopping them on the street as many as 10 times a tour not to complain about a problem in their daily life but to simply say thank you.

Even the hard-hearted among the ranks were softened in spirit by the outpouring of support that the attacks generated. The nation itself gave heart and soul to help in the simultaneous relief efforts underway in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, where two other planes struck the morning of September 11. Rescuers from distant cities joined the effort to find life in the wreckage or to pass out food and water to ironworkers laboring beyond exhaustion to bring closure to a grieving family.

For those who came to grips with their loss, it was not long before memorial services began in New York, in counties that surround the city, and in New Jersey and Connecticut. A fire truck with the letters FDNY navigating the streets of Long Island would have seemed out of place three years and one day ago. In the hours, weeks, and months following the attacks, we simply bowed our heads in prayer at its sight.

The unity and support of our fellow citizens undoubtedly helped many. Doorways, storefronts, and car windows were adorned with the beautiful rectangular constellation of 50 stars and 13 red and white stripes that collectively make up the American flag. It seemed for some time that those attached to white poles would never again rise above half-staff. But they did.

New York, a city more famous for fashion than compassion, reinvented itself in the wake of tragedy, as great cities are apt to do. The heart on the New York City T-shirt that screams in bold letters “I Love New York” seems to have gotten bigger.

The T-shirt, long a telltale sign of a vacationer without fashion sense, has become a staple of city residents, commuters, and visitors alike. And why not? Who among us in this nation today does not bear the right to say that they, too, in some small way, are New Yorkers?