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Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama were to pay silent respects at ground zero Thursday afternoon and later attend a city forum on public service. McCain also was scheduled to attend a memorial service in
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Family members and students representing more than 90 countries that lost citizens on Sept. 11, 2001, were to read the names of the more than 2,700 people killed in
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Some mourners wondered if the remembrance would, or should, continue as it has indefinitely. About 3,500 people attended last year’s ceremony, a roughly 25 percent decrease from 2006.
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"We’ve kept it alive, and perhaps kept it alive too long," said Charles Wolf, whose wife, Katherine, was killed at the
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Wolf, who lives in downtown
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Other victims relatives worry that Sept. 11 will revert to being just another date on the calendar.
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"The remembrances have to continue; for how long, I can’t say," said Barbara Minervino of
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Minervino planned to attend a noon Mass in her husband’s memory after listening to the names being read during the memorial service in
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That service moved to a park just east of ground zero last year because of construction at the trade center site. But family members are allowed to descend seven stories below ground and touch the spot where their loved ones died.
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The ceremony was to include the reading of 2,751 victims’ names, one more than last year. The city restored Sneha Philip, a woman who vanished on Sept. 10, to its official death toll this year after a court ruled that she was likely killed at the trade center.
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Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was scheduled to speak at the ceremony, as he has every year, along with officials including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
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Last year's reading by Giuliani, then a Republican presidential candidate, drew protests from family members who said the city was ill-prepared for the terrorist attacks under his leadership and questioned whether he should be there while running for the White House. They had no opposition to McCain and Obama’s visit this year.
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The 2-acre (0.8-hectare) park, located at the spot where American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagons west wall, consists primarily of 184 cantilevered benches, each bearing a victims name.
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President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush were to mark the anniversary during a moment of silence on the South Lawn of the White House. The president was then to head to the Pentagon memorial.
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Memorials are years away from being built in
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Photo: AFP