9/11: 10 Years Later, Items From The Rubble

When you ask New Yorkers now what they remember, they start with something
big — the first news report, the phone call in which someone said, "Turn on the TV."

But then they go to the kind of small thing that when you first saw it you had no idea it would stay in your mind forever.

The look on the face of a young Asian woman on Sixth Avenue in the 20s, as she looked upward. The votive candles on the street and the spontaneous shrines that popped up, the pictures of saints. The Xeroxed signs that covered every street pole downtown. A man or a woman in a family picture from a wedding or a birthday or bar mitzvah. "Have you seen Carla? Last seen Tuesday morning in Windows on the World."

It marked a psychic shift in our town between "safe" and "not safe." It marked the end of impregnable America and began an age of vulnerability. It marked the end of "we are protected" and the beginning of something else. >>>More

Loved ones of the fallen share their mementos and stories