Symbols of Freedom, Arms of Family Provide Solace for a Shaken City

Night brought the blessing of darkness to Washington yesterday.

After a morning of death, catastrophe and shattered security and an afternoon of numbed disbelief, the late summer evening brought a close to a day few people here will ever forget.

It ended with the Pentagon, blasted by a hijacked terrorist airliner, smoldering in the sunset, a tomb for as yet uncounted victims.

It ended with the avenues of Dupont Circle silent, as if struck by an unseen natural disaster, the normally bustling streets of Old Town Alexandria eerily empty, and malls throughout suburbia shuttered and still.

Near sunset, standing on a hill in Arlington that overlooked the Pentagon, Mount Vernon Realtor Keith Whited, 49, said he had gone there to reflect. "I was just looking for someplace that I really could get in touch with what happened," he said. "I'm still stunned."

The second Tuesday of September 2001 closed in the Washington area with grief, anger, and a kind of civic exhaustion, as people realized the depth of what happened, struggled to understand why, and then grappled with how to explain it to their children.

People said they knew the capital, the nation's gathering place, was vulnerable.

"This is a monument to democracy," said Joe Perella, who had paused at the Washington Monument earlier in the day. "On the one hand, you feel very safe here. On the other, you know that it's a target for those that despise our country."

Protection plans had been made. "We've been expecting something like this for years," said a police officer guarding a roadblock.

But it had not been enough.

As she walked near the Mall with her husband at midday, Jennifer McKinnon, 28, a nurse from East Providence, R.I., reflected on her vulnerability. "You like to think you're so protected, especially in D.C., and then something like this happens and it takes it all away," she said.

The day had been supercharged, since the first word of the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and then the catastrophe of the hijacked airliner striking the Pentagon.