"I'm sorry," she said, "I have friends who died here."

Suddenly, at 9:30 p.m., the streets around the site echoed with the sound of drums, the accompaniment to marchers on Broadway that turned onto Vesey Street and proceeded to the World Trade Center site, which was lit up like a stadium at night. One of the marchers, Carla Nordstrom, who was part of a peace procession, said she was there to send a message "that war is not the way to handle the situation. Too many people have died."
The peace marchers were proceeded by dozens of Colombians, who placed large flower wreaths along the fence at Church Street. A woman explained that they had come from the city of Medellin. "Today we want to express a feeling of solidarity," she said.
Two children, Steven Arvoleda and Michelle Castano held pictures of their cousin Danny Correa, a 25-year-old victim of the attacks who had worked on the 98th floor of the north tower. Looking at the wreaths, said Arvoleda, "makes us feel good, makes us feel like we're in Colombia."

Wagner Park: 6 a.m.

About 200 Lower Manhattan residents rose before dawn and made their way beneath the light of a full moon to the sunrise service in Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Park, sponsored by Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields and Councilman Alan Gerson. Facing the Statue of Liberty, they held candles and listened to choral music and some brief sermons and speeches. Keira and Steve Rosenthal, from Battery Park City, stared ahead at the fence that, two years ago, had stood between them and the river when they ran as far as they could run to escape the collapsing south tower.

"We were there, I mean right there," said Steve, thrusting his finger toward that fence as if trying to convince himself this tranquil spot overlooking New York Harbor was the setting for the ashen night that had enveloped them and other Lower Manhattan residents seated nearby.

"It's still fresh in my mind but it's not so sharp," said Keira.

The couple said they think about finding a house in the suburbs, but it has seemed less appealing in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. "There may be too much of a connection to Downtown," said Steve. "I don't know where we'd move."
Toby Turkel, who lives on Park Row, looked around at the assembly of residents and said it troubled her that more people had not shown up. "What bothers me is that each year it's less and less," she said. Turkel said she came to the service because she wanted to be around other people. "I didn't want to be in a building. I feel safer like this. I'm still a little skittish-today-being in crowds, being in enclosures."


Families

Around 7:15 a.m., Roosevelt and Birdie Glenn waited for their daughter on the corner of Vesey Street and Broadway, near the check-in table for the children who would read the names of the victims. The couple wore matching white t-shirts with a picture of their son Harry Glenn, 39, who died on the 97th floor. "It's helpful to be around the other families," said Roosevelt Glenn, "We had to come somewhere. They never found his remains" 7A
The time was approaching 8:46 a.m.. Two years ago, at that minute, Richard Bosco was entering Tower One on a sales call for Citibank. Now Maureen and Bill Bosco, his mother and father, were standing a few blocks north of there, at Murray and Greenwich Streets, and Bill was saying that they were lucky because Richard's body was found. "We're supporting all those others who have no remains. It was tough enough for us being notified that they found Rich, but it was closure."
Maureen and Bill sported matching shirts that said "9-11-01 Never Forget." on the backs and Bill said that he feared that time will take its toll on the nation's memory, that Sept. 11 will just become "some pages in a history book." Yet all the memorials and ceremonies take their toll, he said, because they "prolong the process."

"We're trying to get back to the state of happiness that we know we'll never get to," he said.


The Bell

Throughout the morning and early afternoon, anyone within a few blocks of St. Peter's Church, at Church and Barclay streets, heard the regular tolling of a bell. In front of the church, a steady procession of people lined up to ring a 5,000-pound bell suspended from a steel frame on the street. It is one of four"Bells of Remembrance," part of a project organized by the Franciscan Center of Wilmington, Del., and the McShane Bell Foundry of Glen Burnie, Del., to commemorate the terrorist attacks. "To honor those who died; to console those who remain," reads the sign on the side of the truck which hauled the bell from Delaware.

"I know some people who died at the World Trade Center," said Cathy Floreno, from West Patterson, N.J., explaining why she was waiting for her turn to pull the rope attached to the bell's clapper. On the morning of the terrorist attacks, she saw the south tower struck as she was walking to work on Broad Street.

"Last year was a very bad day. I was hysterical crying all day," she said. "Today, I went to the early morning mass here at St. Peter's and that helped me. It gave me a feeling of peace and love. You have to move on. But never forget."


At the Farmers' Market

Farmers were selling their produce and baked goods at the World Trade Center Greenmarket, which reopened in June in Liberty Park, across the street from the southeast corner of Ground Zero.

Scott Hill, whose family owns Orchards of Concklin in Pomona, N.Y., stood by his tables of apples, peaches, pears, corn, pies and muffins. Scott had returned to the site on Sept. 17 to try to retrieve the farm's truck, which was covered in debris but intact.

He said he had gotten used to working in the shadow of site of the terrorist attacks, after selling last year at the Bowling Green Greenmarket and occasionally visiting the Trade Center site.

"It's not that difficult for me to be here now," he said. "Last year was the healing. You had to readjust to being Downtown. You still had all the missing posters on the fence in front of the St. Paul's church."

His voice showed little emotion until he paused for a moment and listened to the voices of the children reading the names of World Trade Center victims as they were broadcast over speakers. Suddenly, Hill's eyes filled with tears.

"When you stop and listen, it's difficult," he said, lifting his glasses to wipe his eyes."That's their families. Their fathers and mothers. You just feel for the kids. As one of my customers said, 'It breaks your heart.'"


Business on the Edge of Ground Zero

Just a block below Ground Zero, where thousands of mourners had assembled, Nigel Louis, stood at the counter of his Trade Center Lock & Hardware, hoping to block out the events.

"I try to get over it. I try to move on," he said.

For a long time after the terrorist attacks, he said, people came in the store asking where he had been that day and what he had experienced. "They still come in asking about it sometimes. But I started saying, 'No, I wasn't here.' I don't really want to talk about it."

But, without prodding, he began to recount what he had seen and done on the morning of Sept. 11 two years ago, how he was supposed to visit a customer at the Trade Center but hadn't been able to make it, how he had stood looking at the hole the first plane had made in the tower and at the flames, Louis shifted from one foot to another-as if pacing in place.

"It's important to remember, but it's not a good feeling thinking about what happened that day. It just brings it all back."

Miryam Yagual, who owns two small newspaper and candy stands at Cortlandt and Church Streets, said the arrival of the second anniversary brought back a lot of "the sad feelings," but she was coping better than last year.

"Last year on 9/11 it was terrible. I was very afraid. I didn't want to open at all, though I forced myself to come in. I'm not sure exactly what I was afraid of. I didn't really think there would be another attack, but I was nervous anyway." This year, she said "it's different. I came in. I didn't feel afraid."

But since Sept. 11, Yagual is afraid to take the subway. She commutes from Jersey City and used to take the PATH. Now she could take PATH to West 4th Street and then the subway Downtown, but instead comes in by car.

"I might take the PATH again when the station here reopens. I'll see how I feel."

A Gathering at P.S. 234

As school began at P.S. 234, some 60 parents came together in the cafeteria for coffee and bagels. It was as noisy as the schoolyard had been moments before, until an announcement was made. "It's 8:46. Please observe a moment of silence."

Instantly the room-and it felt like the whole world-was utterly quiet. Some people bowed their heads. A baby cried. Then slowly and quietly, the conversations resumed, with talk about the sad day two years earlier as well as the usual chatter that goes with each new school year, and fresh beginnings.

After dropping off her twin first-graders, Amy Sewell headed to the cafeteria, but she stayed just two minutes. "I felt the need to get outside," she said. "My children weren't at P.S. 234 in 2001. Those who evacuated their children share a common bond, and I understood their need to be together."

Looking South, from Tribeca

Outside the school, the rhythm of much of the neighborhood seemed unchanged that morning. As always, Stuyvesant students crowded Chambers Street on their way to school and workers walked briskly to work. At Warren and Greenwich Streets, Gee Whiz was doing a brisk breakfast business. But Andy Koutsoudakis stood alone outside outside, staring south. Asked what was going through his mind, he said that he was watching people walk towards the site and recalling those he saw running in the other direction two years earlier. His memory of a woman tearing at her hair as she rushed to find her child at P.S. 234, across the street, was especially vivid to him.

Koutsoudakis said this anniversary feels just the same as last, and he expects that they all will. "I don't think it's going to change," he said. And as if willing it to be true, he said it again. "I don't think it's going to change."

But just down the block, closer to the site, an eerie calm took hold. Karen Meyer stood on the corner, searching for the words to describe how this anniversary was different from the first one. "It's flatter, not as charged," she said. Last year, she added, she couldn't look at family members without crying. "I don't know if I'm deadened to it. It might be acceptance. I hope so."
Meyer lived at Tribeca Pointe in northern Battery Park City until movng to Chelsea in January, 2002. She couldn't take the sound of trade center steel crashing into the nearby barges at Pier 25, and the "war zone" atmosphere around her. Still, she said, the neighborhood feels like home. "I just needed to be here today," she said.

Nearby, two men and a woman, all strangers, stood together with Dale Prager of Monroe, N. Y. whose hand-held TV broadcast the ceremonial reading of names at Ground Zero. There was Joseph Garber, a city worker from Brooklyn, who said he had lost friends who were firemen and police officers. Grant Megan, a tourist from Birmingham, England, remembered how devastated he was by the attacks and "just wanted to be close to where it happened." And Emily Murphy, a young publishing intern from Nova Scotia, felt a connection to the disaster through her father, who had worked at the trade center long ago, an uncle who is a city fireman, and her godmother, who escaped from one of the burning towers.
As for Prager, she had volunteered for nine months, much of the time at the "Taj Mahal," the Salvation Army tent where many of the recovery workers were fed. Along the fence outside the tent, the pictures of some 20 victims had hung for months.

"Every day I'd say hello and goodbye to each of them," she said. Watching her tv, a look of recognition sometimes came to her face. Smiles alternating with tears.

"I don't know anyone who died," she said, sobbing. "But I got to know their names and their faces."

The Hallmark

In the downstairs community room of the Hallmark, a senior residence in Battery Park City, 40 residents had gathered to remember the day.
Edith Morris, who moved to the building in September 2000, praised the staff, as she reflected on what the day meant in a larger sense. "We're here to commemorate the time the world changed forever," she said, "And we were there."

They recounted how the staff moved the 71 residents out of the first floor dining room and kept everyone calm and fed while they frantically worked to find a place to go. Six or seven hours later, with the help of police who were posted outside on West Street, they were loaded on buses and traveled to another senior residence in Yonkers where they and the employees slept on cots four or five to a room.

Some residents brought artifacts, like the dust masks they had worn on the bus. A few read aloud. One woman recited a powerful and poignant poem composed in anger at terrorists-not after September 11, 2001, but more than 10 years earlier after learning that her son-in-law died on the Pan Am flight that exploded over Lockerbee, Scotland.

Independence Plaza Seniors Remember

In the community room at Independence Plaza, seniors watched the reading of names on a wide screen tv. Around 11 a.m. Anna Roina walked slowly to a table prepared with candles and lit the first one. Other residents gathered around the table to follow suit, and when they had finished, Roina read aloud to them some of her reflections on the day.
"Ten years ago many of us have begun ti heal, some of us are still fearful to go back to our former way of living. We shake when we hear a loud noise, we look up at the sky when we hear a low plane and when we have the black out we said, there we go again. Every morning I stand at the kitchen window and look to see if the Empire State building is still there. I have yet to heal."

When she had finished reading, Roina returned to her seat, crying.


Balloons

Outside the Balloon Saloon, a party supply store at the corner of West Broadway and Duane Street, a menagerie of 20 colorful inflatable animals hung by string from the awning. Inside, Ilya Nikhamin was tying together 10 yellow smiley-face balloons to fill an order from a nearby office.

"Everybody is ordering a lot of cheerful balloons today-smiley-faces and sunshines," said Tiffany Hershkowitz, who was working behind the counter alongside the store's owner, her mother Sharon. "They're sending them to friends, to cheer them up. It's a tough day for a lot of people."

Earlier in the day Hershkowitz had herself sent a few balloons to a woman who was burned in the Trade Center on Sept. 11 and lives Downtown. "I just wanted to let her know I was thinking about her.

Hershkowitz said she has yet to move on.

"Every day when I come out of the subway and look up, I think about it. The shadows are different. The feeling in the neighborhood is different. Even if I forget briefly, I commute through Penn Station and see the soldiers with guns, so then it quickly comes back."

Next door at 149 Duane St., Anna Szerencsy, Tiffany's aunt and Sharon's sister, was trying hard to make it through the day at her shoe store, Anna's Place. She had tried to listen to the reading of the victims' names on the radio, but had to turn it off because it was too upsetting.

Szerencsy had watched the towers being built and after the disaster said she was obsessed. "I watched every TV station. It was so unbelievable that I had to see the pictures over and over again to make it real. Now, I don't want to see it anymore."


The View from Battery Park City

Walking back to her apartment in Battery Park City, Luchy Edwards cried for three blocks after seeing an elderly couple holding hands and carrying a picture of their son laughing. "I came home closed my shades and started cleaning my apartment," she said.

Edwards and her family still live in the Gateway Plaza apartment that overlooks the site. Seated in her living room, she recalled coming back to her dust-filled apartment. Back then, she said, "I'd reflect back to all those family memories of dinners and moments we all enjoyed there. Now that things are back to normal I find my memories and associations go back to that time when my life wasn't normal."

"The memories just flood you," she added, "and the weight of the memories is always present."

The weight of memories was also on Roopa Mirchandani after returning to her Rector Place apartment from West Street, where she had listened to the reading of the names.

"In some ways it feels like it happened today." she said facing the living room window in her apartment with its sweeping 40th floor view of the site. "I can feel that feeling run through my veins like it did that day. There were 20 fire trucks behind me today, and of course technically I wasn't scared like I was on that day. But I still feel alarmed, like something might happen, when I hear sirens. I can't help but feel maybe it's something.

Several hundred Battery Park City residents gathered at North Cove marina for a ceremony sunset, where they inscribed a "gratitude scroll," banner-size sheets filled with messages of thanks. Page upon page was filled with thanks to firefighters, emergency workers, neighbors and strangers who helped them flee, or just get through the difficult days and weeks that followed.
As an intense orange sun set over the Hudson River, the group walked in a procession to South Cove where neighborhood children read the names of eight Battery Park City residents and five local firefighters who were killed in the terrorist attacks.

"Over the past two years we've felt upset, known fear, struggled to keep up with our hectic lives," said Rosalie Joseph, a Battery Park City resident who organized the ceremony and conceived of the gratitude scroll. "Neighbors, strangers and family have helped us breathe from one day to the next."

"Just as breath reaffirms life, gratitude celebrates healing," she added. "For all of us, healing has started and continues."

Beneath the Tribute in Light
That night, the Tribute in Light's twin beams soared to the clouds once again. In Battery Park City, just south of the World Financial Center, an almost festive atmosphere prevailed as visitors came to photograph them at their source, or just look skyward in awe. Tammi Shontere, from Germantown, MD, lay flat on her back outside the Battery P{ark City 16 movie theater, gazing at the lights. She called a "wonderful way to bring a sense of peace."

"Every so often the bugs light up," she said. "And I'm thinking how that really reflects so many souls."