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New York Commemoration Changing

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By AMY WESTFELDT, The Associated Press

Published: September 11, 2007

NEW YORK - Once again, the city will pause for four moments of silence to mark the attacks that killed more than 2,700 people. Family members will lay flowers where the twin towers fell, and the names of victims will be read.

But much will be different on the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, after tense arguments about where to hold the ceremony, whether a presidential candidate should be allowed to speak and whether it's still fitting to put on such a large-scale commemoration.

Firefighters, first responders and construction workers who helped rescue New Yorkers - and many who later recovered victims' bodies - were chosen this year to read the names of the dead in a small public park instead of the World Trade Center site.

After bitterly objecting that they wanted to pay their respects closest to where their loved ones died, family members will be allowed to descend to the site below street level and lay flowers near where the towers stood.

'It's still like visiting a grave on the person's anniversary of their death,' said Rosaleen Tallon, whose firefighter brother, Sean Tallon, died that day.

While the list of 2,750 victims killed in New York is read, Osama bin Laden planned to appear in a new video and read the will of one of the hijackers whose plane flew into the north tower.

And firefighters and several victims' family members are furious that Rudy Giuliani, the city's former mayor who has spoken every year at the ceremony, is doing so today as a Republican presidential candidate.

Giuliani, who has made his performance in the months after the 2001 terrorist attacks the cornerstone of his campaign, said last week that his appearance was not intended to be political.

'I was there when it happened, and I've been there every year since then. If I didn't, it would be extremely unusual. As a personal matter, I wouldn't be able to live with myself,' Giuliani said Friday at a campaign stop in Florida. 'I will do that for as long as they have a ceremony out there.'

Several family members worried that Zuccotti Park, just southeast of ground zero, would be too small to accommodate the thousands of people. City officials said there was actually more space available than at the previous location.

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