Live updates: Sept. 11 victims remembered 25 years after attacks

Tight security ahead of 9/11 memorial ceremony

Security at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum was extremely tight Friday morning, ahead of the annual ceremony honoring those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Police have closed off roads in lower Manhattan and armed officers were lining the streets. U.S. Secret Service agents and dogs were inspecting equipment and bags before visitors and news crews entered the ceremony area.

Thousands are expected to attend Friday’s remembrance ceremony, which is open to family members of those who died in the attacks. Former presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are to attend. also to be in attendance.

Vice President JD Vance was also expected to attend. President Donald Trump is attending a memorial ceremony at the Pentagon.

LIers gather for Point Lookout ceremony

Before dawn, people had already begun arriving at Point Lookout, where the Town of Hempstead will hold its annual 9/11 memorial ceremony Friday.

As the sun slowly began to rise, three fire trucks pulled up to the memorial. Just after 6 a.m., two fire trucks could be seen positioning their ladders to raise a large American flag. A small group of volunteers and town officials had begun setting up tables along the beach’s path for the annual distribution of carnations.

As one looked toward the beach, two light beams representing the Twin Towers — the Tribute in Lights — could be seen from Manhattan.

The annual sunrise ceremony is to begin at 7:30 a.m.

Mamdani: 9/11 attacks were 'a horrific act of terror'

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a pre-recorded video message Friday for the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which he called "a horrific act of terror."

In the 70-second video, Mamdani is seated at a desk outside, the Manhattan skyline in the background. He mourns the killings of the 2,753 people who died at the World Trade Center — "2,753 universes gone in an instant" — and the deaths of those who died in the years since from having breathed in toxic air at Ground Zero.

"We remember 9/11 as the darkest day in our city's history. But we also remember what so many New Yorkers did in that darkness," he said, from donating blood and opening their homes to those who couldn't get home, to carrying colleagues down the Twin Towers stairs and then returning inside to help more.

"Twenty-five years later, we have a sacred obligation to those who were stolen from us, to care for one another as they cared for strangers, to live lives worthy of the sacrifices they made, and to build a city worthy of their courage, a city where we run toward one another," Mamdani said.

Later Friday, the mayor will visit three 9/11 memorial events. He will lay a wreath at 6:55 a.m., attend the official 25th anniversary event at Ground Zero beginning at 8 a.m., and deliver remarks at 3 p.m. at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church & National Shrine’s Interfaith 9/11 Memorial Service.

Moment of silence for those who died of 9/11-related illnesses

The scores of people who have died from 9/11-related illnesses — many attributed to living and working in lower Manhattan after the attacks, including those involved in rescue and clean-up efforts at Ground Zero — will be center stage on this year’s anniversary.

The ceremony at the 9/11 memorial site will feature, for the first time, a moment of silence for those who have died from 9/11-related cancers and other illnesses. It also comes as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released scores of records appearing to show that city officials apparently misled the public about the level of toxic chemicals in the air following the collapse of the towers.

A recent report said more than 97,000 people have been afflicted with illnesses related to the attacks, including respiratory and digestive illnesses, as well as cancers.

Honoring those who died in the attacks

The 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will be marked Friday morning with the same solemn ceremony that has been held each year: the reading of the names of those killed at the site where the Twin Towers once stood in lower Manhattan.

The ceremony, at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, will pause for the customary moments of silence to mark when the hijacked passenger jets struck the Twin Towers, when each tower fell and when planes struck the Pentagon and crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

And for the first time this year, as Newsday has reported, the ceremony will include a moment of silence for those who have died from 9/11-related illnesses.

Of the nearly 3,000 souls lost on 9/11, 497 were Long Islanders.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to attend the ceremony, as well as former mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani. Vice President J.D. Vance, former presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, are also expected to attend. President Donald Trump is expected to attend a ceremony at the Pentagon.

Patricia Smith, whose NYPD mom was killed on 9/11, shares emotional journey

For nearly 25 years, Patricia Smith has been frozen in time as the little girl in the red dress.

She wore it on Dec. 4, 2001, when she was 2, as she toddled across the stage at Carnegie Hall, holding her father's hand, and accepted the Medal of Honor for her late mother.

Nearly three months earlier, NYPD Officer Moira Smith died while rescuing people from the World Trade Center. She was the only female NYPD officer killed while responding to the terrorist attacks.

The image of Patricia in her dress at the ceremony was published worldwide and instantly became a symbol of the tragedy; one that resonates to this day. As each anniversary passed, she became accustomed to the lights of cameras and questions from journalists.

Now she's 27 and pursuing a law degree from Fordham University. And she's come to terms with the truth that her relationship with Moira Smith is difficult for some to understand.

"I have been to funerals, been through the grieving process. ... I realized that that was not how I was grieving my mom, and it was a completely separate entity in itself — I was grieving a mother," Patricia said. The confidante; the one to talk to about boys, and about doing her hair.

"She was forced to grow up very early," said James Smith, her father and a retired NYPD officer.

Patricia has had an unusually close look inside the criminal justice system.

In May 2017, she went with her father to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There, they watched pretrial hearings for detainees that U.S. officials have accused of coordinating the attacks. But the long-running prosecution has been marred by delays.

Now, she said, frustration is what she feels most.

"It seems like things only start really moving when there’s outcry, and not even around Sept. 11 is there any outcry anymore," Patricia said. "I want people to want justice that my family and I want."

Airport security and 9/11

The creation of the Transportation Security Administration and stricter security screenings have made travelers safer, but advances in technology over the past quarter century have helped ease some of the restrictions rolled out after 9/11.

Click here to read more about how the terror attacks forever changed airport security.

What the 9/11 Memorial & Museum means to victims' families

"It's my happy place," says Monica Iken-Murphy, who has vivid memories of the fight she waged for a memorial at the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan.

A 9/11 widow — her husband, Michael Iken, a 37-year-old bond trader, worked on the 84th floor of the south tower — she created a nonprofit called September’s Mission to advocate that the site where 2,753 people had perished be preserved as a memorial.

Read about her story and more here.

Newsday editor remembers running 9/11 coverage

Monica Quintanilla, assistant managing editor at Newsday, led the organization's coverage on the morning of 9/11/01.

Here's what she'll never forget.

Long Islanders inspired by 9/11 to a life of public service

The 9/11 terror attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people, including hundreds of firefighters, police officers and other first responders, but they also stirred a call to service that had not been seen in the United States since the attack on Pearl Harbor 60 years earlier.

Across Long Island, New York City and the rest of the nation, countless young people who watched first responders rush into the fiery buildings while everybody else was trying to get away were inspired to pursue lives of public service by enlisting in the military or pursuing careers as firefighters, EMTs and law-enforcement officers.

Here are some of their stories.

Stories of Muslims on LI, after 9/11 and now

In the weeks after 9/11, when life was forever altered, Americans came together in shared grief.

But for many of the approximately 100,000 Muslims now living on Long Island, the deadliest terrorist act ever committed on U.S. soil — carried out by 19 al-Qaida hijackers — pointed an unwelcome spotlight at them.

In interviews with Newsday ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Muslims recalled the pain they felt at the time. While many of them were U.S. citizens fully integrated into American life, suddenly, they said, they were viewed as the enemy.

Read their stories here.

New forensic technique brings hope to victims' families

Relatives of unidentified victims of the 9/11 terror attacks say they are hopeful forensic experts using a breakthrough technique called genetic genealogy will be able to identify more sets of remains.

There are nearly 1,100 sets of remains of victims from the World Trade Center that have not been identified 25 years later.

Read more here.

Remembering Garden City's many 9/11 losses

Jonathan Neff Cappello's name has been carried into an Iraq combat zone. It survives in the names of nieces and nephews he never met.

A Long Island lacrosse award bears the name of David Leistman, a Cantor Fitzgerald bond trader who had starred in the sport at Adelphi University.

More than 200 high school seniors bought new laptops, thanks to a fund honoring Australia-born computer scientist Stephen K. Tompsett.

Tributes, scholarships and a stone memorial on the Village Green are among the ways Garden City honors those three men and 20 other people with ties to the village who were killed 25 years ago in the 9/11 attacks. 

The scale of the loss in the village of about 23,000 people remains unimaginable for some. But Garden City is far from alone in its grief: About 500 Long Islanders died in the terrorist attacks, including about 350 from Nassau County, about 200 of whom came from Hempstead Town.

Long Island's 9/11 diaspora stretched from Port Washington and Valley Stream as far east as Sag Harbor and Greenport.

"The sheer number of our residents who perished is one of the things that makes it very difficult to forget," said Garden City Mayor Edward Finneran, who on 9/11 worked for Merrill Lynch in a building near the Twin Towers and watched as they collapsed.

Cappello graduated from Fairfield University in 2000. At college, he had befriended Brian Connelly, a fellow freshman. Months after his friend's death, Connelly joined the Army.

In 2004, while serving in the Iraq War, Connelly inscribed Cappello's initials and "9/11/2001" inside his Humvee. Later, he carried a Mass card from Cappello's memorial service.

"I can’t disconnect my life as it is now — it’s impossible to disconnect that from the loss of Jonathan," said Connelly, who now lives in Alabama.

The village fire department will hold a ceremony at the Garden City memorial at 7 p.m. Friday. This year, it will include the Garden City High School choir — teens born after the attacks.

How LI educators are teaching 9/11 to a generation that didn't experience it

After 25 years, educators on Long Island are finding new ways to teach today's students about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Teachers are using their experiences as well as newspapers, YouTube clips and testimonies as ways to illustrate impact and aftermath of the historic day.

In Bethpage, for instance, students and staffers interviewed more than two dozen school employees, from educators who were teaching in New York City schools as the events unfolded to security personnel who were working as city police officers or firefighters when the towers came down. The stories help paint a picture and give students a deeper perspective of history, educators say.

"We want them to take away not only the knowledge of what happened, but also the lasting impact on our country," said Erica Indenbaum, coordinator of social studies for the Bethpage school district.

'Kissed by angels': LIers born on 9/11 inspired to live meaningful lives

Nick DiPaola was born at 4 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, a few hours before the sun rose over the New York skyline.

His mother, Layne, cradled her baby, surrounded by her husband, Michael, and their two other children at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset.

At 8:46 a.m., not five hours into Nick's life, American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north tower of the World Trade Center. Another plane soon crashed into the south tower.

The terrorist attacks live on as among the most infamous days in U.S. history — and a point of fascination for Nick DiPaola and others born on that day.

"I’ve always felt a strange obligation to learn more about it," he said.

On Friday, DiPaola and other Long Islanders born on Sept. 11, 2001, turn 25. The group includes a Coram woman, a pair of Huntington twins, and a Great Neck woman who doesn't mind ceding the spotlight on her birthday to the victims. They hope to honor the people whose lives were lost while also celebrating a milestone birthday in their own ways.

Emily Anderson, of Coram, learned how to answer the usual line of questioning while growing up. "Yep," she would say, "I'm born on 9/11."

For twins Anne and Nina Rodriguez, the day stirs complicated emotions. Their mother, Clarice, recalls telling them: "You were kissed by angels. You have to do something great with your lives." The twins now work in helping professions.

Isabella Nicolaides, of Great Neck, said the tragedy on the day she was born has shaped how she sees her role in the world. She donates blood several times a year.

Layne DiPaola said she felt "responsible" for conveying the magnitude of what had happened to her children, including Nick — while also celebrating his special day.

"In that dark day," she said, "it brought our family a little light."

3 stories of the ongoing health toll of 9/11

Twenty-five years after Sept. 11, 2001, the number of people battling — and dying — from 9/11 related illness continues to grow.

Three Long Islanders spoke to Newsday about how they manage their chronic health conditions and remain determined to thrive.

• U.S. Customs Service special agent Frank Caramanica spent months sifting through wreckage at Fresh Kills landfill looking for remains. He lost friends and went to a lot of funerals, and had survivors guilt. Then he got cancer.

• After the 9/11 terror attacks, John Ryan oversaw rescue and recovery operations for the Port Authority for nine months. He wore a mask and reminded all first responders they needed to do the same. Some listened. Some didn’t. Some removed them to communicate with others.

• Rob Weisberg, an accountant in lower Manhattan and Commack volunteer firefighter, worked triage near the World Trade Center after the planes hit the tower. But watching a group of firefighters walk into the Twin Towers, never to return, haunted him. He battled severe depression and emerged trying to end the negative stigma around mental health.

The ongoing tragedy of 9/11

Twenty-five years after immense clouds of noxious dust from the World Trade Center terrorist attacks turned much of lower Manhattan into a toxic waste site, contaminants that police officers, firefighters and others breathed in and touched, sometimes for months on end, are still ravaging bodies and claiming lives.

Two thousand seven hundred and fifty-three people died directly from the attacks. But counting people who have succumbed to 9/11-related illnesses, the total death toll is undoubtedly much higher, and growing. An estimated 400,000 people were exposed to toxins on or after 9/11.

"The tragedy of 9/11 continues to unfold," said Dr. Craig Devoe, systems head for gastrointestinal medical oncology at the Northwell Cancer Institute. "The story isn’t over."

Click here to read more.

Jets' Aaron Glenn on his 9/11 experience and relating to younger players

Everyone who was in or around New York on 9/11 has a story. Aaron Glenn has his too.

The head coach of the Jets was still a cornerback for the Jets back then, playing in what would wind up being his last season for them. It was a Tuesday morning, which meant it was an off day, but Glenn, who was dealing with a knee injury, was in the training room at Hofstra. He also was on the phone with his wife.

“And my phone just goes off,” he recalled this past Tuesday as his team prepared for Sunday's season opener against the Titans under those same crystal blue skies that stood out 25 years ago.

He was unsure why he’d lost that signal, but in 2001 those things happened more often than now. Soon, though, he saw on television why this interruption in service had taken place.

“Just seeing exactly what was happening — it was almost live at that point — you are in this state of ‘Wow’ that you can’t believe it,” he said. “That day was a change-of-life moment.”

Increasingly, though, there are fewer and fewer players in the league who were even alive on that day in 2001, nevermind have concrete memories or personal associations with it. Eighteen of the 53 players on the Jets’ active roster are younger than 25. Two current Jets players, Andre Cisco and Jeremy Ruckert, grew up on Long Island. They were both 1-year-olds when the planes hit the towers. Defensive tackle Jowon Briggs was even younger. He was born on Sept. 1, 2001.

Which leaves Glenn and his first-person accounts of that awful day in the position of having to try to relate his experience – New York’s experience – to them.

Read more here.

Where to find LI's 9/11 memorials

There are more than 200 memorials across Long Island honoring the victims of 9/11.

Newsday took a close look at them ahead of the 25th anniversary.

Read more here and see an interactive map.

The Mets' 25-year tradition of visiting an NYC firehouse

Twenty-five years ago, on the worst day in New York City’s history, Massapequa’s Dan Dunleavy was on a firetruck bound for Ground Zero, part of a group from Inwood at the northern tip of Manhattan.

“It was still snowing out there,” Dunleavy recalled. “From all the concrete dust and paper. Certain smells just remind me of it. Like a car fire sometimes, the smell that was going on at the Trade Center, the burning steel.”

Dunleavy, now 59, is the captain at Ladder 25/Division 3/Collapse Rescue 1 located on West 77th Street, where four pillars from the 2001 Mets — Al Leiter, John Franco, Todd Zeile and Robin Ventura — along with a younger captain, David Wright, visited Tuesday morning as a continuation of the team’s quarter-century post-9/11 tradition.

Read more here.

Neil Best remembers 9/11 with the Giants and the aftermath

Neil Best was Newsday's Giants beat writer in 2001. He was in Denver on Sept. 10 to cover the team's season opener against the Broncos.

Then the world changed the next morning.

The scene at the airport departure gate was one of chaos and confusion, filled with rumors of additional attacks across the country, most of them false. Would-be passengers were herded into the main terminal area, where against all odds Best and three other Giants beat writers at competing outlets secured what seemed to be the last rental car in Colorado, a red Ford Explorer that Hertz offered for the low, low price of $250 a day. Sold!

The ensuing 28 hours were a high-speed montage across two-thirds of the continent that served as a reminder of America’s ability to come together when it has to.

Read more here.

How the Mets helped NYC heal after 9/11

Ten days after 9/11, the Mets hosted Atlanta in the first professional sporting event in New York City since the attacks. Players and coaches alike wondered whether or not the game should even happen.

“The first thing that came to mind for all of us was: why are we playing a baseball game?” former Mets pitcher Al Leiter told Newsday. “And obviously, hindsight's 20-20, and we were part of the healing process. And no question, it was the right move for Bud Selig and Major League Baseball to say we have to play baseball.

“The dichotomy in the mindset right after 9/11 for everybody — I was living in the city the whole time when I was with the Mets, on the Upper East Side — it was like you were angry. You were furious at what transpired, terrorists taking down the World Trade Center, obviously the other planes as well, Shanksville and the Pentagon. But there was a vulnerability to what we were thinking . . . You were scared. You were nervous. You were mad.

“But it all surmised that baseball was part of the healing process.”

The game not only provided a night of healing, but it also featured one of the most iconic, inspirational moments in New York baseball this century: Mike Piazza’s go-ahead two-run home run in the eighth inning.

Read more here.