Carla Gilkerson, a 54-year-old school bus driver, sits at a table with friends at Abner's diner on Main Street in this small Ohio town. She's never been to New York City and doesn't know a soul who died on Sept. 11 — but talk of the terror attacks a decade ago immediately moves her to tears.
Step outside of Abner's and there, across the road at Main and Center Streets, is one of the largest Sept. 11 memorials outside the attack sites; a granite monument etched with all the victims' names, surrounded by four giant pieces of World Trade Center steel.
Gilkerson often walks and bikes past the memorial, stopping to run her finger over the names. "I feel like I knew them," she said. "And that I can keep their memory alive."
A decade of public mourning for the nearly 3,000 people killed in the nation's worst terror attack hasn't abated; in fact, it thrives in this country, from the steel memorial parks to the fake Statue of Liberty outside a Las Vegas casino to a tiny chapel by ground zero. The attacks have spawned a ritual of extravagant public mourning that hasn't waned; even Americans who didn't lose a loved one on Sept. 11 are still grieving as if they had.
Gilkerson says it best: "I think we'll always mourn our losses from that day."
AP
ADVANCE FOR USE SUNDAY, JUNE 26, 2011 AND... View Full Caption
ADVANCE FOR USE SUNDAY, JUNE 26, 2011 AND THEREAFTER - Victor, left, and Ben Ortega, brothers from El Paso, Texas, walk along the September 11 memorial outside the New York, New York Hotel and Casino, Wednesday, June 22, 2011, in Las Vegas. Across the country, an extravagant ritual of public grief for "our losses" has not abated in a decade, from public memorials of steel and photos to the palpable sadness of strangers. Experts say Americans are still processing the most tragic public event of their lifetimes, before they can begin to let go. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson) CloseExperts in grief say the outsized sorrow for "our losses" is Americans' way of processing the most devastating public event of their lifetimes, which they need to do before they can begin to let go. "This," says Michael Katovich, a Texas sociology professor who teaches on death and dying, "is a process of solidifying our memories."
They're still grieving in Hilliard, a suburb of the state capital of Columbus, and an eight hour's drive from New York City. None of its 28,000 residents died on Sept. 11, yet the people who live in the new subdivisions and work in the small brick buildings that line the downtown still mourned. Mayor Don Schonhardt was one of the mourners, and he went to New York to ask authorities there for trade center steel for the city's memorial.
"We felt it was important to be a community in middle America that would say to the U.S. and the world, that we do remember what happened that day," Schonhardt said.
The memorial fills a city block in the center of town with its two pieces of rusted track from the subway that ran underneath the World Trade Center, and two other large hunks of twisted metal from the towers themselves.
Las Vegas has a permanent memorial at the fake Statue of Liberty outside the New York, New York-Hotel Casino. There's a rotating exhibit of items that were left at the casino in the days after the attacks. Recently, about a dozen Fire Department and police T-shirts from around the U.S. were on display in the shadow boxes, which are lighted at night. The hundreds of other items are archived and stored at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. In a city of excess and fantasy, the memorial — which is across the street from the MGM Grand casino and its golden Lion statue and from Excalibur, a medieval-themed gambling hall — is a sober reminder of reality, and visitors stop and peer into the shadow boxes while walking from one casino to the next.
EDITOR'S NOTE — Tamara Lush is traveling the country writing about the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/tamaralush.
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