The flag that survived the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center and was raised at ground zero in the days after Sept. 11 returned to the site today, unfurled by New York police officers and firefighters at the start of the 10-year anniversary memorial ceremony.
President Obama and former President George W. Bush, seated behind a glass shield at the site, watched as bagpipers led the first responders and families of victims into the site and a chorus sang the national anthem.
New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg opened the ceremony with the first city-wide moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. to commemorate the moment when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower. Obama then read from Psalm 46, which starts, "God is our refuge and strength."
The ceremony will be punctuated by six moments of silence in all, one for each of the moments when the four planes crashed, and one for the moments when each of the towers fell.
Family members of the more than 3,000 people killed in the attacks stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the crowded memorial plaza, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with loved ones' faces and names, after making their way back this morning to the site where the World Trade Center once stood.
"She wanted to work for justice but died from injustice," Tanya Garcia said of her 21-year-old sister, Marlyn, a graduate of NYC's John Jay College of Criminal Justice who died while working at Marsh & McLennan Cos., a financial services firm that lost 295 employees and 63 contractors in the attack. "She was a victim of horrendous terrorism."
Garcia is one of hundreds of family members who will join firefighters, police officers and emergency workers at the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan today for the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. The annual ceremony, in which the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks are read aloud, will take place for the first time at the newly completed memorial plaza, with two fountains in place of where the two towers once stood.
President Obama and former President George W. Bush, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and former Gov. George Pataki, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie arrived at today's ceremony around 8:15 this morning. The ceremony will also include performances by James Taylor and Paul Simon.
Among the crowd gathering at the memorial plaza this morning were children too young to have been alive 10 years ago, clutching Teddy bears and wearing dresses with flags sewn into them, family members wearing T-shirts with the words "Never Forget" emblazoned on them, and T-shirts commemorating members of those fire department ladder units and police precincts who perished in the attack.
Mario Montoya came to remember his best friend, Harry Ramos, who worked on the 82nd floor of the North Tower.
"Every year, I come here to feel closer to him," Montoya said.
Police and security presence in the memorial and throughout Lower Manhattan remains significant; police dogs and armed guards are present throughout the ceremony. New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly told ABC News that there was no new information on a terror plot, but "no reason to lessen our alert status."
The ceremony will conclude with three trumpeters, one each from the New York Police Department, the Fire Department of New York, and the Port Authority Police Department, playing taps.
After the ceremony, Obama will attend memorials in Shanksville, Pa., and at the Pentagon in Washington. He will also attend a Concert for Hope at the Kennedy Center in D.C. tonight, where he will deliver a 15-minute speech on the attacks.
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