9/11 anniversary: New Yorkers gather at memorial in Manhattan for a 24th year, keeping alive memories of those slain in terrorist attacks

On Thursday, a day as bright and blue as the terrible one 24 years ago, the families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks gathered by the reflecting pools and the flags and the engraved names in lower Manhattan to remember those they lost.

At a ceremony grown familiar yet still heart-wrenching, the memorial site once called Ground Zero fell silent at 8:46 a.m., marking the time when a hijacked plane struck the north tower.

A moment passed with only the sound of the rushing water of the waterfalls into the reflecting pools. Then a firefighter rang a single bell that was joined by the pealing of church bells throughout the city.

Next came the names of the dead, a list read by sons, daughters and other loved ones. The list was so long — nearly 3,000 men and women — it took hours to finish.

Close to 500 of those killed were Long Islanders: firefighters, police officers and office workers who had made the early morning commute on what started as an ordinary September day. On Thursday, many of their loved ones and descendants made the same commute to read the names. 

They included family of hazmat firefighter Kevin Smith, of Mastic, killed on the 11th floor of the north tower. His remains were never found. His daughter, Josephine, became the department’s first female legacy firefighter.

James Giaccone, of Bayville, recalled his brother, Joseph Giaccone, killed on the 103rd floor of the north tower while working for investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.

"Twenty-four years is like 24 seconds and you realize how much you missed out on," he said. "This ceremony is essential. When they ring the bell it goes right through and gives you a chance to say the name Joseph Michael Giaccone. When you hear it, it will never be forgotten."

The O'Neill family, from Amityville, came because they lost Peter J. O'Neill, 21, whose life was ended just as it was starting to flower: the young man had finished college, become an Amityville volunteer firefighter and started a job at Sandler O’Neill & Partners, an investment bank founded by an uncle. The office was in the south tower.

Peter J. O'Neill Sr. wept, recalling his son: "He was my best friend. We did a lot together — fished, boating. He started taking over the boating chores. He was the captain ... He loved the water, he loved he beach."

Amityville  Mayor Michael O’Neill said his late nephew was "a caregiver of his friends. He was, you know, he was the one person that kind of organized everything ... For a young man, he had an old soul. There was a lot of empathy."

This day was hard to endure, he said. "Everything percolates up again. It's kind of like a scab that never goes away, a day like today. It’s picked at."

Peter O'Neill's young nephews read the names.

One of the nephews, Peter Ledwell, a 12-year-old named after his uncle, read his uncle's name and said: "Uncle Pete, our whole family misses you so much and wishes you were here. I wear the No. 16 in lacrosse in your honor. We hope we're all making you proud."

A niece of Brooke Jackman, 23, a Cantor bond trader who grew up in Oyster Bay, did some painful math: Her aunt, she said, now "had more birthdays in heaven" than she was alive on Earth.

Families of the dead wore blue ribbons pinned to their clothes. Some of the families wore custom T-shirts and sweatshirts or carried placards bearing their loved ones’ names. Some carried flowers.

One reader, a man who said he was the son of Jon Leslie Albert, of Nyack, said of his father and the other victims that their median age was only 39.

"They had their whole lives ahead of them," he said. "They simply went to work one day and never came home."

The mother and sisters of FDNY paramedic Carlos Rey Lillo came to remember the West Babylon man, who ran into the south tower before it collapsed. Olga Colon, of Orlando, Florida, said her brother was helping rescue people before the tower collapsed. Later, she said, the family would visit the park in Queens dedicated in his name. To stand near where he was last seen felt like a way of communing with him.

 "To be able to feel his spirit, we feel like we're not missing you, brother, we're visiting you," Colon said.

"This is a cemetery. We visit him where he took his last steps," said his older sister, Iliana Flores, of Queens. "We're here and I told him from the beginning I'd be here every year."

In the plaza, uniformed flight attendants and pilots placed flowers at the memorials to the crews of the hijacked planes.

As has been the case for all of the World Trade Center memorial ceremonies, a crowd of dignitaries joined the mourning families. They included New York City Mayor Eric Adams and mayoral candidates Assemb. Zohran Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg also attended.

Federal officials included FBI Director Kash Patel and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik but not Vice President JD Vance, who had been scheduled to attend but was instead visiting the family of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was killed Wednesday.

In an interview with Newsday, Mark Eisen, 70, of Kings Park, a docent at the memorial's museum, said visitors — loved ones of the victims and tourists, too — still grow emotional when visiting the site, particularly the reflective pools and the memorial with the engraved names.

"I share a lot of tears and hugs with a lot of folks that come up here," Eisen said. "I mean, you got to remember, 35 to 40% of the remains have not been found or identified. So we are walking on hallowed ground. So a lot of family members and friends, all they have is to rub their hands on the name."

Eisen, who was working four blocks away from the World Trade Center when the towers were struck, helps visitors find names they're looking for, using a directory on his phone.

Another docent, Gregory Carafello, 65, of Jersey City, said that after 24 years, visitors' emotions seemed less raw. "Everybody here in the beginning, everyone was emotional," he said. A sizable percentage of visitors now weren’t alive in 2001, or were too young to remember.

In Washington Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer led a moment of silence on the Senate floor in honor of those who died and recalled friends he lost in the attacks.

There and in New York City, 9/11 ceremonies were about more than just memorializing the dead.

"It has been a difficult few months for many 9/11 responders and others now suffering illness due to exposures at Ground Zero," said Schumer, referring to concerns over funding for the federal World Trade Center Health Program treating the attacks' survivors, which advocates have said will not will not be able to ensure future care without additional funding. "These heroes and their families don’t deserve chaos."

In Manhattan, a protester shouted "Free Gaza! Free Palestine!" — one of the claimed motives by 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden for attacking the United States was America's support for Israel — as memorial participants read the names of the dead, and one reader appeared to criticize Mamdani. NYPD officers arrested the protester. 

Ceremonies were also held at the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania where other planes were crashed as part of the attacks. 

In total, six moments of silence are observed on 9/11 anniversaries to commemorate the attacks and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, the attack on the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93. 

From dusk on Thursday to dawn on Friday, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum hosts an annual commemorative art installation called Tribute in Light. The two beams of light, which symbolize the original Twin Towers, can be seen from a 60-mile radius around lower Manhattan, according to the museum.

Just before sunset, thousands of people were coming to and from the trade center site, where flowers and flags were left in the grooves of the names.

Two dozen years after Sept. 11, the attacks' destructive force is no longer obvious but the vestiges are real and widespread. American wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, fought in response to the violence done on American soil, killed hundreds of thousands of people in those countries. 

Thousands of men and women who worked rescue and recovery on Ground Zero and on the ruins of the towers live with disease and emotional trauma caused by their work there. Close to 50,000 responders and others have cancer, according to the WTC Health Program. Some Long Islanders who inhaled the toxic mix of dust and gas are alive now because of drastic measures like lung replacements.

New York City's fire department, which employs many firefighters and other personnel from Long Island, said this week 402 of its people have now died from ailments contracted while working at Ground Zero after the attacks. 

In Nesconset, a black granite wall erected to memorialize responders from Long Island who have died from 9/11-related sickness now bears close to 3,000 names.  

Judi Simmons, president of the nonprofit that oversees the monument at 9/11 Responders Remembered Park, said in a phone interview that this year her organization added 362 names — more than they ever have before, so many that they had more granite slabs to hold the new names and others they expect will come. 

Simmons' husband, FDNY firefighter Marty Simmons, died of a 9/11 illness in 2008. Their son, Joe, has been on the job three years. She didn't go to the Ground Zero memorial but spent the morning instead at Marty's old firehouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant, she said. 

"There's a part of the cut that has never healed," she said. "It's always opened — 9/11 hasn't ended yet." 

The organization is scheduled to hold a memorial at the wall 10 a.m. Saturday.

Newsday's Billy House contributed to this story.