Memorials honor Sept. 11 terror victims

On Sept. 11, 2001, Dana Falkenberg, just 3, went through security with her parents and big sister at Dulles International Airport on her way to Australia, where her mom, a professor at Georgetown University, had been named a visiting fellow to the National University in Canberra.

She never made it. That crisp, sunny morning, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the western wall of the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., killing 125 people in the building and all 59 on board, including five al Qaeda terrorists who had walked through the same security with knives and box cutters.

But Dana’s memory now lives forever just feet from where her mother died, at a powerfully sublime memorial dedicated on Thursday by President Bush.

“Each year on this day, our thoughts return to this place. Here, we remember those who died. And here, on this solemn anniversary, we dedicate a memorial that will enshrine their memory for all time,” he said.

On Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, a bell tolled solemnly in New York City, one time for each of the 2,674 people killed when terrorists crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Center. And on the cool, gray day across the Northeast, the two presidential candidates put aside politics for a day of reverent remembrance.

Republican Sen. John McCain laid a wreath beside a granite marker at a somber ceremony in Shanksville, Pa., which commemorates the 40 Americans killed there after passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 rushed the cockpit to thwart terrorists’ apparent plans to strike either the White House or U.S. Capitol.

“I’ve had the great honor and privilege to witness great courage and sacrifice for America’s sake, but none greater than the sacrifice of those good people, who grasped the gravity of the moment and understood the threat and decided to fight back at the cost of their lives,” said Mr. McCain, who spent five years in a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam.

Later Thursday, Mr. McCain and Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama walked side by side down a ramp into the pit that marks ground zero in New York City to silently lay flowers at a makeshift memorial.

“On 9-11, Americans across our great country came together to stand with the families of the victims, to donate blood, to give to charity and to say a prayer for our country. Let us renew that spirit of service and that sense of common purpose,” Mr. Obama said in a morning statement.

At the Pentagon, a sailor rang a bell for each of the victims killed there when Flight 77 crashed into the building’s outer ring. The new memorial, which will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, features 184 cantilevered steel benches topped with granite; underneath, small pools of water reflect light off the polished underside of the benches.

Dana’s bench is the first visitors will see.

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