As families of victims gathered at the World Trade Center site in Manhattan for the 13th anniversary of the tragedy, President Obama, his wife Michelle and Vice President Joe Biden led a moment of silence and memorials outside the White House on Thursday morning.
Today is also the first time the The National September 11 Museum - which includes gut-wrenching artifacts and graphic photos of the attacks - will be open to the public on an anniversary. Fences around the memorial plaza have come down, opening it up to the public and camera-wielding tourists.
But before the public is allowed inside, there is the traditional name-reading ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial Plaza for every one of the people who perished in the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and inside the plane that crashed in rural Pennsylvania. The ceremony started at 8.46am, marking the moment the first plane hit the north tower.
During the ceremony, six moments of silence will also be observed to mark the strikes on the towers, the Pentagon, the collapse of the skyscrapers and the time Flight 93 went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
But for some who lost loved ones in the attacks, the increasing feel of a return to normalcy in the area threatens to obscure the tragedy that took place there and interfere with their grief.
'Instead of a quiet place of reflection, it's where kids are running around,' said Nancy Nee, whose firefighter brother, George Cain, was killed in the attacks. 'Some people forget this is a cemetery. I would never go to the Holocaust museum and take a selfie.'
For others, the changes are an important part of the healing process.
'When I first saw (One World Trade Center), it really made my heart sing,' said Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. 'It does every time I see it because it's so symbolic of what the country went through.'
Mailonline
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