At 9/11 Ceremonies, Moments of Silence and Tears

The families, the politicians and ordinary Americans stood on Saturday in Lower Manhattan where, 20 years earlier, on a similarly crystal-clear morning, two massive towers soared above New York City. At 8:46 a.m., the exact time in 2001 when a hijacked jet crashed into the north tower and their lives and the world began to change in ways then inconceivable, they fell silent.

For two decades, Americans have mourned a loss so deep it shook America to its core. But even as time has passed, and the attacks have moved from fresh memory into the chronicles of history, the people who gathered in New York and near Washington and Shanksville, Pa., said the wounds from 9/11 have remained fresh.

“Twenty years feels like an eternity,” said Lisa Reina, her voice quavering as she held up a photo of her husband, Joseph Reina Jr., who was at work in the north tower of the World Trade Center when the first plane struck. “But yet it still feels like yesterday.”

The ceremonies were just the start of a day of commemoration across the United States and in other parts of the world, which watched in shock as passenger jets hijacked by Qaeda terrorists, slammed into the towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, claiming nearly 3,000 lives in the deadliest attack on American soil.

The anniversary arrives as the United States is in the throes of another grim historic event: a pandemic that has claimed more than 656,000 lives, upended the economy and exposed gaping fault lines in the fabric of American life. In the last week, as many Americans have died of complications from the virus every two days as perished in one fell swoop on Sept. 11.

And the United States has only just closed the chapter on a costly and devastating war that sprang from 9/11’s wake: a 20-year occupation in Afghanistan that began as a hunt for the terrorists who oversaw the attacks and ultimately ended with 170,000 lives lost — more than 2,400 of them Americans — and the same Taliban militants in power there. More than 100,000 Iraqis and 4,400 Americans were killed in the war in Iraq, also waged in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

To honor the milestone, President Biden, who as a senator 20 years ago sought desperately to soothe a panicking country and would later vote to authorize the war in Iraq, planned to visit the sites of each attack for ceremonies honoring the lives lost there.

In a recorded message, Mr. Biden, who now leads the country in one of its most divided moments, celebrated the unity that the United States experienced in the wake of the attacks.

“We saw national unity bend,” Mr. Biden said in a video message posted to his Twitter account on Friday night. “We learned that the unity is the one thing that must never break.”

“Unity,” he added, “is what makes us who we are, America at its best. To me, that’s the central lesson of Sept. 11.”

In New York, the president and first lady, Jill Biden, stood shoulder to shoulder at the 9/11 memorial plaza with two pairs of their Democratic predecessors, Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, who was a senator of New York 20 years ago. Nearby was Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican who was the mayor of New York during the attacks and has since become one of Mr. Biden, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama’s most vociferous critics.

All of them watched as families of the victims read the names of the dead, tears streaming down their cheeks and their voices shaking. The recitation paused for moments of silence marking the times when the hijacked planes hit their targets and when the twin towers eventually fell. As the plaza fell silent, church bells rang.

Bruce Springsteen, the songwriter and singer so closely linked to the New York region, took a moment to honor the victims, performing “I’ll See You in my Dreams,” a song about death and loss.

Many of those who read names at the memorial were children, either born after the attacks or too young to remember the friends and family members who died. Ms. Reina, whose husband worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond trading firm that lost 658 employees in the attack, was pregnant on 9/11. Her son is part of an entire generation that has been born in the shadow of that day and has only received its legacy secondhand.

Ariana and Briana Mendoza, 13, came to Lower Manhattan from the Bronx with their sister Dephaney to pay their respects. “I was only 2 when it happened,” Dephaney, 22, said. “But I have learned a lot about it, and now I am teaching them.”

Nearby, Luis Gonzalez, 41, of Staten Island, stood staring up at One World Trade Center, the tower built upon the ruins of ground zero that shoots above Manhattan like a gleaming beacon of Lower Manhattan’s recovery and resilience. He carried a poster of the old twin towers that now hangs in his bedroom. “I come out of respect,” he said.

At a memorial near Shanksville, Pa., the bells tolled at 10:03 a.m., the moment when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after the crew and passengers fought back against the terrorists who had hijacked their flight and diverted it from their intended target in Washington.

Former President George W. Bush, who was commander in chief when the attacks took place, and Vice President Kamala Harris both attended a ceremony in which the names of the 40 passengers and crew members who died were read aloud.

“On this 20th anniversary, on this solemn day of remembrance, we must challenge ourselves to, yes, look back,” Ms. Harris planned to say, according to remarks shared by her office. “For the sake of our children. For the sake of their children. And for that reason, we must also look forward. We must also look toward the future. Because in the end, that is what the 40 were fighting for: their future, and ours.”

The Department of Defense unfurled a large American flag on the side of the Pentagon, where they also held a ceremony honoring the 184 people killed after a plane hit the building’s west side. Some of those who survived the attack still work in the building 20 years later.

“The hallways that we tread were the ones where so many of them walked,” said the secretary of defense, Lloyd J. Austin III. “It will always be our duty to fulfill their missions and live up to their goodness and to stand guard over this democracy.”

Mr. and Dr. Biden are scheduled to visit the Flight 93 memorial later Saturday for a wreath-laying ceremony. They will then travel to the Pentagon to lay a wreath there with Ms. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.

Corey Kilgannon, Katie Rogers and Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.