Americans Mourn as One

On a bleak day clouded by mourning and memory, Americans marked the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by gathering Wednesday for solemn public rites that revealed the nation’s undiminished grief.

From the thousands who marched down into the scarred pit of New York’s ground zero and up to the newly renovated walls of the Pentagon, to the tiny crowds who attended a firehouse ceremony in Coventry, Ohio, and hundreds of other memorials across the country, Americans paid respects to the 3,025 who died and recalled a devastating day that echoed a year later with fresh warnings of new terrorism.

“I came to show my solidarity,” said Lori Konrad, a USAir flight attendant who joined President Bush and 5,000 mourners on a wind-rippled oat field near Shanksville, Pa., the speck of a town where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed, killing hijackers and the passengers who fought back. “This is like losing part of the family. When I look at the memorial where people have left so many keepsakes in memory of the crew and passengers, it makes me want to cry.”

Throughout Southern California, thousands of people attended dozens of events commemorating the terrorist attacks--from the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, to a dingy coffeehouse, where they played songs written for the occasion, to the Museum of Tolerance, where they lighted a candle for each of the more than 3,000 victims. In Los Angeles’ Koreatown, Buddhist monks trailed a squad of police pipers, carrying a banner proclaiming: “Let there be peace on Earth.”

Even those who busied themselves in the routine of work, or retreated into private reflection, were unable to avoid the relentless tug of the day’s somberness and the spiraling dread of new terrorism threats.

In the wake of government warnings of terrorist movements that spurred a nationwide state of high alert, authorities moved quickly to avert trouble.

A Northwest Airlines jet on its way from Memphis, Tenn., to Las Vegas was diverted to Fort Smith, Ark., after three passengers reportedly locked themselves in a bathroom. A Dallas-bound American Airlines jet returned to Houston escorted by two F-16 fighter jets after a passenger mistakenly reported spotting a weapon aboard. A bomb threat emptied the Ohio Supreme Court building. And Coast Guard inspectors ordered a freighter out to sea after radioactive traces were detected in its cargo hold.

Airline passengers brave enough to fly and those with no other transportation choices found themselves buckled in for tense journeys. A flight attendant on a United Airlines jet from Dallas burst into tears over the intercom as the plane landed at Washington’s Reagan National Airport. Dogged by morbid memories of planes turned into flying bombs, some travelers were visibly relieved after landing, alternately voicing defiance and admitting inner fears.

“I noticed more people looking around at each other,” said Richard Wolff, a Jacksonville, Fla., businessman exiting a USAir flight at Reagan National. “I know I was more nervous today.”

American businesses marked the day with varying degrees of homage. Flags flew at half staff outside McDonald’s restaurants. Kmarts opened two hours late. General Motors held media ads. Even the Web mourned as Yahoo’s home page was bordered in black and the auction site EBay displayed a virtual flag.

Air passengers were among the few Americans who could avoid the gripping televised images of mourning beamed from the concrete valleys of Lower Manhattan--and the mirror-image rites that the rest of America offered as their own salve for a lonesome day.

If New York had its burly, silent bagpipers and string-quartet dirges, Washington had its Pentagon parade ground of military men and Pennsylvania had its impromptu memorial fence of fluttering flags and baseball caps. Hundreds of other American towns found their own homespun ways to pay homage.

Firetruck horns in Waco, Texas, blared in solidarity. Navy fighter jets roared over Norfolk’s harbor. Park Ridge, Ill., residents planted “liberty trees.” Ancient church bells tolled all morning in tiny Winthrop, Maine--as they did in churches across the country--for each moment of impact of the four doomed planes. Firefighters in Bethesda, Md., snapped to attention outside their station, saluting a half-staff flag and idling rush-hour traffic as respectful motorists slowed in appreciation.

In Coventry, Capt. John Dolensky, surrounded by his 16-member fire department, all bedecked in dress double-breasted uniforms, intoned the names of 343 firefighters who perished at the World Trade Center. It took him 20 minutes. “Some of the names were a challenge, but these guys are heroes,” Dolensky said later. “I hope I did them justice.”

All day, every news channel offered grim, year-old footage of the twin towers afire and fresh images of mournful bagpipers and heartbroken families, reminding even casual viewers that attention had to be paid.

“I’m watching it right now on television, and I’ve been struggling to keep it together. I’ve been crying, to be frank,” said the Rev. Kimberly Murphy, pastor of Winthrop Congregational Church. As the bells of her church sounded near her home, Murphy sipped her coffee in tears, preparing to lead her Maine congregation in an evening prayer service for Sept. 11’s victims and survivors.

Bells tolled too outside the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., interrupting the homily delivered by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa on behalf of the Sept. 11 victims. “Our hearts still go out in compassion and sympathy,” Tutu said, “as you still wrestle with the consequences of those traumatic events of that day, that awful day.”

In Seattle, Linda Martin, 34, a market research worker, broke down as she listened to a broadcast of the ground zero ceremonies on her car radio. The day before, she had scoffed at the rites as “sensationalism. But ... listening to the radio, I realized today is a day for everyone to be reminded of the grief that people directly affected struggle with every day.”

Nearly 16,000 Seattle residents felt similarly, crowding into Safeco Field to listen to a sober performance of Mozart’s “Requiem.” Carrying flags and banners, thousands more joined a public procession later in the day, joined by Red Cross workers who handed out packets of tissues to those overcome by anguish.

Even before former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani began to read the names of the dead at ground zero, a brigade of construction workers led their own impromptu memorial uptown at a skyscraper site at Columbus Circle.

At 8:15 a.m., nearly 100 men wearing hard hats spilled into the surrounding streets. One hardhat ordered comrades working several floors above to drape flags out from the scaffolding. Then, at 8:46 a.m., the exact moment an American Airlines 757 crashed into the north tower a year ago, the workers suddenly doffed their helmets and put their hands on their hearts.

Several blocks south, at Times Square, traffic froze as pedestrians and drivers stared up at a vast NBC video screen carrying the first minutes of live coverage from the service at ground zero. There was no sound from the screen, and the intersection too was eerily silent. The cars waited, idling, as the lights changed red, then green, then red again. Businessmen and students waited patiently with their briefcases and backpacks, watching for long minutes, many quietly weeping.

At dusk, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ignited an eternal flame in Battery Park City to memorialize those killed at the trade center. As Bloomberg held a battery-powered, flickering electric candle high, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan greeted a crowd of foreign dignitaries. “The memory of those we lost will burn with unending brightness,” Bloomberg said as the flame caught.

In SoHo, Michelle Peters wore black to a prayer service for 12 vanished firefighters from Ladder 5. It was the same turtleneck and trousers she had worn a year ago, when she rushed down to the World Trade Center Elementary School to retrieve her two daughters. “I wanted to be able to walk with dignity in these clothes instead of running,” she said. “I just need to show that I’m in control.”

It was the sort of small gesture of defiance that Americans ached for as they lurched through a long day that crawled on at a caisson’s pace.

Los Angeles businessman Billy Deeb strode onto the same Burbank-to-Oakland Southwest Airlines flight for which he had bought a ticket a year ago. His flight that day, like hundreds of others across the country, was grounded.

“For me, this is closure,” he said, taking an exit-row seat as the plane took off. Flight attendants wore patriotic ribbons and thanked the passengers for “showing the American spirit.”

“This is coming full circle,” Deeb said, adding: “It’s like the president said. We have to travel to show that the terrorists didn’t win. We cannot be afraid.”

Small victories were also claimed in the heartland. At Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, Virgil Ledgerwood, 69, and his wife, Davette, made up for their own shattered plans. They had planned to fly from St. Louis to explore Yellowstone, the Badlands and other Western national parks--an itinerary aborted by the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Wednesday, they were making up for lost time. “We had it on TV at the motel,” Davette Ledgerwood said. “It was hard to watch. I was glad when we got in the car. We listened to a little radio, but when the president was done, we turned it off and found a music station.”

She wore an American flag T-shirt as she explored the monument with her husband. Around them were hundreds of tourists making similar statements, most wearing patriotic-themed clothes. Along Highway 90, the main tourist route through South Dakota, residents hung flags and signs from their homes, many reading simply: “We’ll never forget.” In Rapid City, S.D., patriots blared their horns in response to a parked white car that was spray-painted with an exhortation: “Honk for the USA!”

At the Pentagon, where Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and a parade of generals and dignitaries spoke to an appreciative audience of 13,000, only the upbeat story of the government’s hasty, efficient rebuilding was enough to buoy some who attended.

Ann Mianegaz, a Pentagon civilian employee, had considered staying away, certain she could not handle any more sorrow. But showing up at the last minute, she found herself heartened. “Now that I see it, I think, this really does show a victory here,” she said. “You look at this place, how it’s been rebuilt, and you think, yes, we did it.”

Rumsfeld and other officials lauded construction workers and military officers who worked feverishly to repair the blackened gash left when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building a year ago, killing 184 inside and aboard the aircraft.

“There was nothing you could do when the plane was coming,” said Frank Probst, a quality assurance manager for the Pentagon Renovation Program who survived the blast a year ago. “The only thing we could do was build it back.”

Uniformed troops paced on the five-sided building’s rooftop, while hidden just out of sight were Humvee military vehicles mounted with armed batteries of Stinger missiles aimed skyward.

In San Diego, Rear Adm. Matthew Moffit told a group of sailors atop the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis that there is “work yet to be done.”

“The admiral’s got it right: There’s unfinished business out there,” said Case Ryan, 20, a third-class petty officer from East Texas. “We’ve got to get Saddam Hussein this time for good.”

America mourned under the gun, its shores patrolled by beefed-up Coast Guard patrols, its air corridors rent by fighter jets. Air Force pilots were aloft over New York and Washington, officials said. Two F-16s were quick to take to the skies over Texas after several people reported seeing a passenger with a weapon aboard a Fokker 100 jet flying to Dallas from Houston.

“There were never any threats made or anything,” said American Airlines spokesman Ernie Soto, “but the pilot decided it would be better to be safe than take a chance, so he came back.” Airline officials later said two armed air marshals were on board.

Authorities were taking no chances on the ground in Houston, either. At the mosque of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, Sheik Omar Inshanally led a midafternoon prayer service for 35 Muslim men. “Muslims have a double reason to be prayerful and hopeful and angry today,” Inshanally said. “Those cowards who killed people made so many lives miserable.”

But as Inshanally and other leaders decried “the act of brutality” of Sept. 11, a totem of the tension wrought of the nation’s long day of mourning sat just beyond the ornate iron fence. Parked outside, motor off, was a blue-and-white Houston police patrol car.

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Times staff writers Arianne Aryanpur, Geraldine Baum, Faye Fiore, Megan Garvey, Lisa Girion, Scott Gold, Abigail Goldman, John J. Goldman, Bill Plaschke, Eddy Ramirez, Esther Schrader and Richard Simon and researchers John Beckham, Lianne Hart and Lynn Marshall contributed to this report.