NEW YORK (KRT) — 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.”
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 all 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 snap 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.”
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,” Dalton said. “It was something to show respect.”
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.”
Many posters have a common theme, the heart-shaped symbol of love: Oregon Loves New York; Holland Loves New York; California University of Pennsylvania Loves New York; God Loves New York.
Many 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.”