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December 12, 2001
At the White House and in outer space, on a factory picket line, at statehouses and far-flung embassies, Americans and their allies paused Tuesday to commemorate the instant three months earlier when the first hijacked jetliner struck the World Trade Center.
Drums rolled, guns fired in somber salute, the national anthem was played or sung. But many of the ceremonies centered on a moment of silence.
"Just the silence, I think, was better than words," said Lt. Gov. Gary Sherrer of Kansas after a ceremony at the Statehouse in Topeka. "It spoke for itself."
The White House commemoration began with a drum roll at 8:46 a.m. EDT, followed by The Star-Spangled Banner.
"Every one of the innocents who died on September the 11th was the most important person on Earth to somebody," President Bush said. "Every death extinguished a world."
In Florida, Jenzell Dixon read aloud a prayer for the children in Afghanistan and those at home "who have no clothes to wear" and "no food to eat."
Dixon couldn't see over the top of the lectern, so Gov. Jeb Bush held the microphone at the 10-year-old's level.
Bush urged those in the audience to remember the firefighters and police officers who ran into the burning buildings of the World Trade Center in New York while thousands of people tried to run out. He asked for remembrance of those who died in the attack on the Pentagon and for the "ordinary people who thought they were headed west" when their plane crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field.
And he praised those who have given to the victims of the attack.
"I'm so proud of the children who have given to the children of Afghanistan," Bush said.
In Tampa, hundreds of military personnel from more than a dozen countries listened to U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks pay tribute to the American servicemen killed since the war in Afghanistan began.
"Think about those who have given their lives after Sept. 11, not only in support of America, but for so many nations around the world," said Franks, commander of the war in Afghanistan and head of U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base.
In Washington, ceremonies took place at the Capitol, the Justice Department, the Transportation Department and the Pentagon. Education Secretary Rod Paige, visiting Washington's Duke Ellington School of the Arts, urged students to cherish their freedom to express themselves.
In New York City, firefighters, police officers and construction workers at the World Trade Center site interrupted search and cleanup operations for an interfaith prayer service. A lone trumpeter played a slow, mournful Star-Spangled Banner.
As generators hummed in the background, Muslim, Jewish and Catholic leaders recited prayers for the dead and the survivors.
Even astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour and the international space station joined the commemoration, listening to the U.S. and Russian national anthems.
-- Times staff writer Alisa Ulferts contributed to this report.