America Marks a Grim Anniversary

Five years ago, Carlstrom, a quiet and polite man who stops here to help an old woman navigate a high curb and there to help an old Marine veteran tape a memorial on the fence, was in the North Tower. He was setting up a triage unit in the cavernous lobby when he felt a shaking and heard a roar, like an avalanche. One hundred ten stories were coming down upon him.

"The South Tower had already gone, so we knew this could happen," he said quietly as he stood on Church Street, watching the Emerald Society's bagpipers wet their lips. "I knew I had six, maybe seven seconds."

He ran north on West Street and dived down a side street. Metal beams, clouds of volcanic-like dust and boulders hurtled by. Somehow -- he's not sure how or why -- Carlstrom survived, and as he huddled there he thought of his friends who at that moment were dying.

"I come down every year, to think about my people I couldn't get out of there." He shrugged, helpless. "These memories are never going away, I realize that now."

Each anniversary has its own feel. The first was defiant and heartbreaking, the Fire Department's bagpipers leading a ragtag march of 3,000 firefighters, cops and ordinary citizens into the dawn and across the Brooklyn Bridge to Ground Zero.

This anniversary feels different, the wounds half-cauterized, the neighborhood around Ground Zero rebuilt, shiny, polished. And yet the roses are stuffed in the gates and the photos taped up, and everywhere around Ground Zero there are families with photos of their loved ones on their lapels and purses, slowly walking down the ramp into that deep pit.

There was not a sense this time of a city come to a stop. Many on Church Street hurried to work. But others were there to protest, to talk of conspiracies, to put up art -- and many just to quietly listen as family members read off the names of the dead.

"I worked in the hole a couple of times, and it kind of touched me," Tom Miller, 41, said from behind mirrored sunglasses. He wore biker boots, a T-shirt with a big American flag and a handlebar mustache. He repairs construction cranes, and he drove south on his Harley to the memorial.

"It's just emotional, the destruction, to see people wasted here -- that's just the best way to put it."

Elsewhere the day was given to private remembrance. At Sixth Avenue and Houston Street a powerfully built man in a business suit and sunglasses knelt on the sidewalk, head bowed in front of Engine House 24, which lost eight men on that day.

He got up and walked away and was momentarily startled to be asked his thoughts. "I live across the street, and I guess I feel like I owe these guys my prayers," he said. "I love this city, but I don't feel it's very healed. So many people just got wiped out on a perfect day just like this."

The Pentagon

Zenovia Cuyler was starting her morning at a Pentagon health clinic on Sept. 11, 2001, when she heard that an airplane had ripped through the building's limestone exterior. When she learned where the plane had crashed, she immediately feared the worst.