NEW YORK — The seventh anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks will be marked again by four moments of silence and the somber reading of victims’ names, but this year, presidential candidates attending the ceremony have also pledged to put politics aside for the day.
Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have agreed to help keep the focus on remembering those who were lost, not the race to the White House.
Anthony Gardner, WTC United Family Group’s executive director, whose brother Harvey, 35, died in the attack, said he couldn’t speak for other families but said he welcomed the candidates.
“I think it will bring national focus to Ground Zero as it rightfully deserves,” he said. “This was an attack on our country, regardless of our party affiliation.”
Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son, Christian, 28, died in the trade center collapse, said she couldn’t be happier about McCain and Obama attending.
“I think it’s a great thing for them to show that one of these two people who will be the next president of the United States is paying respect to the 9/11 victims,” said Regenhard, founder of Skyscraper Safety Campaign, a nonprofit that has lobbied for safer high-rise towers. “I hope they will take a more meaningful role … in health care for first responders who are now sick and dying.”
The ceremony will be at Zuccotti Park, a block away from the former World Trade Center site. Last year was the first time the memorial was held at the park and not Ground Zero, because of construction safety concerns.
At 8:46 a.m., a moment of silence will observe the time the first passenger plane struck the North Tower. Bells will ring at houses of worship across the city and the reading of the names will begin.
This year each of the 2,751 names of World Trade Center victims will be read by a family member and a college student representing the native country of the person who died.
The name reading, like years past, is the cornerstone of the Thursday ceremony.
Shortly before 9 a.m., families of the victims will descend into Ground Zero using the construction ramp on the south side of the 16-acre site before returning to street level.
At 9:03 a.m. Thursday, the reading of the names will stop for a moment of silence indicating the moment a second plane slammed into the South tower.
Two more moments of silence are at 9:59 a.m. and 10:29 a.m., representing the times of the collapse of the south tower and north tower.
In Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, 250 to 300 people gathered at sunset as Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi stood at the September 11 Memorial to the 355 county residents killed.
“This ceremony, like this monument, is our feeble effort to tell those who still suffer, to tell those who still grieve, we have not forgotten and we will never forget,” Suozzi said.
Staff writer William Murphy contributed to this story.
