SmashMouth

A solemn reading of the names. Moments of silence to mark the precise times of tragedy. Stifled sobs of those still mourning.

As the nation pauses Thursday to mark the thirteenth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack, little about the annual ceremony at ground zero has changed. But so much around it has.

For the first time, the National September 11 Museum — which includes gut-wrenching artifacts and graphic photos of the attacks — will be open on the anniversary. Fences around the memorial plaza have come down, integrating the sacred site more fully with the streets of Manhattan while completely opening it up to the public and camera-wielding tourists.



A new mayor is in office, Bill de Blasio, one far less linked to the attacks and their aftermath than his immediate predecessors. And finally, a nearly completed One World Trade Center has risen 1,776 feet above ground zero and will be filled with office workers by this date in 2015, another sign that a page in the city's history may be turning.

For some who lost loved ones in the attacks, the increasing feel of a return to normalcy in the area threatens to obscure the tragedy that took place there and interfere with their grief.

"Instead of a quiet place of reflection, it's where kids are running around," said Nancy Nee, whose firefighter brother, George Cain, was killed in the attacks. "Some people forget this is a cemetery. I would never go to the Holocaust museum and take a selfie."

But for others, the charges are an important part of the healing process.

"When I first saw (One World Trade Center), it really made my heart sing," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. "It does every time I see it because it's so symbolic of what the country went through."

"I want to see it bustling," she said. "I want to see more housing down there, I want to see it alive and bursting with businesses."

As happens annually, family members of those killed in the attacks will gather Thursday morning to read the names of the deceased, pausing the sad roll call only four times: when the first plane struck the World Trade Center, when the second plane struck, when the first tower fell and when the second tower fell.

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SmashMouth

Never Forget!

QBREES9

Never Forget, Never will.

Choupique

the goverment new.

osama bin ladens family departed the USA just prior... and during a no fly timeline.

QBREES9

George W Bush.