'Hallowed ground' draws rapt tourists

Sadness, curiosity propelling masses to Trade Center site

11/26/2001

By DAVID JACKSON / The Dallas Morning News

NEW YORK – New York City's newest tourist attraction is not a sports stadium or an art museum.

It is a demolition site and a graveyard, the remains of the World Trade Center – a smoldering, dusty monument to terrorist destruction.

To thousands of Americans, visiting the site of the former Twin Towers has become a pilgrimage as they find themselves drawn to ground zero.

"I wanted to say 'thank you' to the ones who have given so much," said Carolyn Cox, part of a Big Apple tour group from Richmond, Va. "There's a silence here, a respect.

"It's sacred ground."

Ms. Cox pointed up to the street sign at the corner of Washington and Carlisle, where old newspapers remain wedged.

"Look at those papers ... whose life was that a part of?" she wondered.

While some vendors in the area try to cash in on the tragedy – selling Twin Towers photos, patriotic pins, and FDNY and NYPD T-shirts – most visitors go directly to barricades along Broadway to snap pictures of the wreckage.

The reverent, the history-minded, and the curious have trekked here. They have left behind flowers, shirts, caps, candles, teddy bears, and written tributes to the victims and survivors of Sept. 11.

As wrecking balls file down the jagged remains of collapsed buildings, some people pray while others take pictures. Some talk of what it must have been like when the planes struck each tower. Others wonder if other attacks are part of America's permanent future.

"I think it's the first time we've realized that this can happen to us, here in America," said Jean Stanislaw, a businesswoman from Sun Valley, Idaho. "It's just something I think everyone should see. We have to be on guard; we have to take our freedom more seriously."

Mayor's blessing

"People have a very legitimate and honest interest in wanting to be able to see it," Mr. Giuliani recently told reporters.

Thanksgiving brought thousands of tourists who wanted to go to ground zero. Lisa Dalton, who supervised a drill team from South Garland High School that marched in the Macy's parade, called the experience "very, very moving."

"I just thought it was an important part of our history, as horrible as it is," Ms. Dalton said. "It was something to show respect."

The crowds have gradually increased in the weeks since the tragedy, said nearby residents.

"I know it bothers some of my neighbors – it's never nice to live in a tourist center," said Don Sexton, an international business professor at Columbia University. "But it doesn't bother me. I understand." A painter, Mr. Sexton is drawing artistic inspiration from the new visitors. He is painting an impressionistic portrait of gawkers at Church Street and Park Place.

"I paint the neighborhood," Mr. Sexton said. "That's what I do. It helps me deal with it."

Nearby, people clamber onto windowsills to get better pictures of wreckage that looks like a burned and twisted erector set. Large mounds of junk piles still burn.

The air retains an acrid smell that has some worried about environmental quality. Jackhammer-wielding workers have dug trenches in city streets, as electrical and telephone systems remain under repair.

The scene exudes a strange power.

"It's like a magnet," said Henry Fernandez, a Brooklyn native who is now an electrician in New Castle, Del. "You just get drawn to it."

Many want to leave something behind. They include letters of tribute from Kingsport, Tenn., to Japan. One typical sheet of paper reads, "Wimberley, Texas, sends love, prayers and hopes to all in New York. You will not be forgotten."

In one poster, middle school children from Eau Claire, Wis., are lined up on a field to spell out USA.

Another banner announces the forthcoming bicentennial of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.

On security fences bordering Broadway, mourners leave shirts and caps from fire departments across the world. People have hung large bed sheets and given out pens so visitors can write impromptu messages.

Tokens of respect

Elsewhere around ground zero, people have etched their thoughts on the dusty windows of closed businesses. In the window of one cafe, someone drew the outline of the Twin Towers, with the notation "WTC RIP, Sept. 11, '01." On the same pane, someone erased an apparent obscenity next to the name of Osama bin Laden.

"It's an overwhelming feeling of destruction, how destructive people can be," said Nancy Perkovich, an lawyer from Sacramento, Calif. "You think about all the lives who were in there."

The estimated death toll has steadily fallen, a sliver of good news since the Sept. 11 attack. Once feared as high as 7,000, the number of fatalities is now estimated at less than 3,900, as authorities have discovered duplicate names on different lists and foreign workers who are still alive.

"With all the hustle and bustle [of the World Trade Center], it's amazing they lost so few people," said Dennis Strack, a financial planner from St. Louis who trained in one of the towers. "You have to give a lot of credit to the rescue people."

Visitors also pointed out that the real death total would never be known. The fires incinerated some victims; others were pulverized when the towers collapsed.

Many are struck by the sheer size of the devastation.

"If you watched it on television, you can't get the full scope of it, the magnitude of it, the size of it," said Colleen Daniel, an IRS computer programmer who lives near Cincinnati.

Some tourists said they visited New York specifically to pay tribute at ground zero. They described their journey as attempt to give something back to the big city.

"I've been to New York many, many times and I've always had a great time," said Ken Anderson, who drove from his home in White Mills, Ky. "It's always been very good to me. I just felt compelled to come down there in bad times."

After taking some pictures, Mr. Anderson planned to go to Bloomingdales to buy firefighters hats as gifts, then head over to Rockefeller Center for a little ice skating.

Others expressed a personal connection to ground zero. They said that while terrorists targeted the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, they attacked the United States itself.

"It's definitely the biggest thing that happened to this country," said Pru Chapman, who works at a homeless shelter in Boston. "It's affected not only our military but so many civilians. It's affected people all over the country, from New York to California."