![]() ![]() Several blocks away, Mary McGee sat on a ledge on the corner of Liberty and West streets. “There were so many young people,” Bicaj said. “They did nothing wrong. I can never forget. Never forget.” On Tuesday, Bicaj sat at the back door of his building - in part so he did not have to listen to the reading of the names of the dead at the ceremony at the plaza across Liberty Street. View Gallery: North Jersey neighbors we lost on 9/11 (2 of 2)Įven today, Adem Bicaj, 76, says he starts to cry when he recalls all the photos of the dead that plastered the wall of a makeshift museum and memorial on the first floor of a building he supervises on Liberty Street. Suddenly the air filled with soot and paper - all blown across the East River from the wreckage of the trade center.ĭuring the somber months that followed, Nahlen says, she refused to read the lists of the dead. “I didn’t want to know who was lost,” she said. “If I don’t know someone died, in my mind they’re still here.”Īnd so we try to cope, sometimes trying to forget the horror of 9/11, other times recalling memories that resurrect pain. “I remember the day well,” she said of Sept. Nahlen smiled, then looked toward the plaza a few blocks away. Brooklyn barked as a wave of Hudson River water smashed into the bulkhead and launched a stream of spray into the air. As the names of the dead were being read at the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, Nahlen strolled along the Hudson River with two French bulldogs named Brooklyn and Bleecker. On Tuesday, Nahlen drove from Warwick, New York, to Manhattan, where she works as a dog walker for a half-dozen clients. After all, the area has been attacked three times in the last 25 years, making it the most targeted area in America.īut at the same time, Nahlen says she is not going to change her routine. Gloria Nahlen said she sometimes feels afraid that another attack could take place in Manhattan - especially in lower Manhattan. “The threats are there, but I feel we can’t think about it,” Coopor said. “It’s not scary. A white marble cross hung on a red string from the bicycle’s seat. On the ground, someone had painted “love” on a solitary white rock. ![]() I feel like everybody can relate.”Īs Coopor spoke, he gazed at a so-called ghost bike - a bicycle, painted white and chained to a light pole on West Street, bearing photos of the eight victims of last October’s bike path attack. “I feel like we can all come together and mourn,” he added. “What happened will unite everybody. “It’s a very important day because it brings back a time when everybody came together,” Coopor said, describing not just the 9/11 carnage but last October’s attack, too. Two blocks north, Derek Coopor did not have time to stand still for a moment of silence. He was too busy tending to a Citi Bike ride-share station he supervises on the corner of Chambers and West streets.īut he nonetheless found himself thinking of all the victims of 9/11 - and from last October’s trail of death on the bike path, allegedly carried out by Sayfullo Saipov, 30, an immigrant from Uzbekistan who settled in Paterson. View Gallery: Photos in memory of North Jersey neighbors we lost on Sept. ![]() Mike Kelly: Five portraits of lives forever changed by 9/11īut like hundreds of others, Velez came to the site anyway, if only to stand across the street and try to regain a sense of national unity and common purpose that was so widespread 17 years ago but seems so elusive in these politically divisive times. Photos: See the faces of the 9/11 victims from North Jersey Ground Zero: 17 years after 9/11 attacks, families still grieve Velez was not eligible to attend the official ceremony on the plaza, where relatives read the names of the dead. None of Velez’s family members perished in the 9/11 attacks. On Tuesday, John Velez thought of all the changes and all the death as he stood in silence with dozens of others by a concrete ledge on West Street, across from the National 9/11 Memorial Plaza. And just last October, eight more people - including Darren Drake, 32, a New Milford native - were killed in another terrorist attack, allegedly carried out by a Paterson man inspired by Islamist radicalism who drove a rental truck into walkers and cyclists on a bike path that runs along West Street. 26, 1993, terrorists detonated a 1,200-pound bomb in the parking garage below the trade center, killing six people. 11, 2001, wasn't the first time terror had struck this corner of the city, nor would it be the last.
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