Post by Administrator on May 31, 2002 11:08:00 GMT -5
New York Concludes Its 8 1/2-Month Recovery and Cleanup Operation
They carried pictures. That is all they have -- pictures, memories, heavy hearts and lives rendered rudderless in the blink of an eye. They walked the streets of Lower Manhattan with those pictures today, much as they did months ago, when they traveled from hospital to hospital looking for their loved ones. Today they carried bouquets of white roses and lilies to lay at the place they call hallowed ground.
There came two boys, Christopher and Jonathan Otten, aged 12 and 9, carrying their load like security blankets. Their arms overflowed with the bulky firefighting coat and heavy black hat of their late father, Michael Otten, a second-generation firefighter.
There came Jake, a beautiful reddish brown horse, playing the role so often reserved for dignitaries. Though hung with the tools of the uniformed services -- boots, an ax, a nightstick, a rain poncho -- Jake's saddle was empty. He was the riderless horse, for the common man.
And down in the 70-foot-deep crater where the World Trade Center towers once stood, firefighters and police snapped to attention for the playing of taps and the mournful roll of the drums as their comrades carried out the last stretcher -- empty, but for the neatly folded Stars and Stripes; empty, because well over half of the 2,823 dead still are unaccounted for, even as the recovery operation at Ground Zero today came to its official and symbolic end.
They carried pictures. That is all they have -- pictures, memories, heavy hearts and lives rendered rudderless in the blink of an eye. They walked the streets of Lower Manhattan with those pictures today, much as they did months ago, when they traveled from hospital to hospital looking for their loved ones. Today they carried bouquets of white roses and lilies to lay at the place they call hallowed ground.
There came two boys, Christopher and Jonathan Otten, aged 12 and 9, carrying their load like security blankets. Their arms overflowed with the bulky firefighting coat and heavy black hat of their late father, Michael Otten, a second-generation firefighter.
There came Jake, a beautiful reddish brown horse, playing the role so often reserved for dignitaries. Though hung with the tools of the uniformed services -- boots, an ax, a nightstick, a rain poncho -- Jake's saddle was empty. He was the riderless horse, for the common man.
And down in the 70-foot-deep crater where the World Trade Center towers once stood, firefighters and police snapped to attention for the playing of taps and the mournful roll of the drums as their comrades carried out the last stretcher -- empty, but for the neatly folded Stars and Stripes; empty, because well over half of the 2,823 dead still are unaccounted for, even as the recovery operation at Ground Zero today came to its official and symbolic end.