On September 11, all global tributes lead to lower Manhattan

Never forgetting the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks manifests itself worldwide in more than a thousand permanent markers: memorials, statues, plazas, plaques, reflection pools, benches.

Among the highest concentrations of remembrances memorializing victims of those terrorist attacks are in New York City, where 2,753 people died, and on Long Island, home to nearly 1 in 5 of the dead, about two-thirds from Nassau County and a third from Suffolk.

The sites come into special focus on each anniversary, with Wednesday’s being the 23rd since terrorists aggrieved by U.S. foreign policy and plotting with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaida flew two hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.

The sites include the preeminent 9/11 memorial — the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum, at Ground Zero, where each victim's name will be recited Wednesday: 2,983 men, women and children killed in attacks at the World Trade Center site, the Pentagon, aboard Flight 93, and the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing at the towers.

Long-term effects

The geopolitical ripples from 9/11 and the response to the attacks can still be felt worldwide — including after two American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have killed hundreds of thousands, more invasive airport checkpoints and restrictions, and a curb on civil liberties.

And the legacy continues to be felt in the deaths that persist among 9/11 first responders who still are dying of illnesses from having worked at Ground Zero.

At 9/11 Responders Remembered Park in Nesconset, a memorial wall currently has 2,289 names engraved. An additional 303 will be added at a ceremony Saturday, according to Judi Summons, memorial president and a reading teacher in the North Babylon school district, whose husband, Martin, 41, was a FDNY firefighter and 9/11 responder who died in July 2008 from respiratory illness related to toxins inhaled during the aftermath.

"In approximately two more ceremonies, we will be out of space at the trajectory we’ve been going, so we will be adding an additional wall," she said. "I’m just going to keep praying that we never have to inscribe on it."

The architect Mark Mancini, who helped design the memorial, said preparations are being made, potentially by putting more granite on the back side of the existing concrete wall.

"The wall is almost full, so we have to actually put some more space in, unfortunately," he said.

"When we did the wall, I honestly thought we had plenty of space on what we provided ... a lot of guys have passed away since then," he said of the September 2011 groundbreaking.

A cultural shift

It took years after 9/11 for the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum to get off the ground and open. Designers visited other sites of remembrance, including the one in Oklahoma City dedicated to the April 19, 1995, truck bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by an Army veteran and right-wing extremist that killed 168 people, including 19 children.

Broadly, memorials now are different from in past generations, reflecting a cultural shift in remembrances.

"Look at World War II. I mean, people couldn’t talk about it. It took us however many years to build a memorial on the Mall in D.C. People in the past didn’t always talk about, or pause to remember," said Kari Watkins, president and chief executive at the Oklahoma City memorial. "The Vietnam Wall was actually built before the World War II memorial."

Just as with 9/11 remembrances in New York City, Long Island and beyond, there are smaller memorials to the Oklahoma City bombing, she said.

"Those are all individually done by towns, or suburbs or communities, or a Rotary group, or a school group," she said, adding: "Those kinds of things help teach the story for years to come. Not everyone may come to the big memorial, or they may not be ready to, but they may be touched by something they see in their own community."

'Profound impact'

James "JC" Cummings, architect-of-record of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., said memorials have democratized in modern times to honor not just generals and presidents and statesman, but the ordinary people who have paid the ultimate price.

"They are at one time important in the context of our nation and history, but they have a more profound impact when they are considered from the point of view of the individuals involved and the individuals who are left to remember those who are memorialized," he said.

For every memorial built, there are countless others lost to time before ever coming to fruition.

In 2004, the Manhasset architect Patricia O’Neill, now 63, created a winning design for what was to be Long Island’s 9/11 Memorial, on the Farmingdale State University campus.

The concept, for which renderings were created but did not get off the ground due to a switch in the priorities of university administrations, O'Neill said, was a linear walking timeline along a wall with black granite slab breaks for each significant time that terrible Tuesday.

Among the entries in that chronology: 7:59 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 took off from Boston with 11 crew members, 76 passengers and five hijackers on board; 8:46 a.m., when the plane crashed into floors 93 through 99 of the north tower; and 10:28 a.m., that tower’s collapse after 102 minutes burning, killing more than 1,600 people.

"The terror of, ‘what’s next? What’s next?’" O'Neill said.

O’Neill — whose then husband, Tom, worked on the 60th floor for Morgan Stanley in the north tower and managed to escape — experienced that terror in real time.

Message of hope

"That panic of, ‘What’s next? What’s next? The Pentagon? The plane in Pennsylvania?’ That was terror. And thinking, ‘Is it over?’" she said.

Nearly a quarter-century later, O’Neill on Tuesday pulled up a PDF of the renderings and described the end of the linear walkway: a shattered mosaic floor and fountain with a gazing ball, encircled with the names of Long Island first responders. The visitor’s valediction was to be a message of hope.

"The idea was with the shattered mosaic pieces put together, with the acoustic sound of water, that something very broken can be put together, to be something beautiful," O'Neill said.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.