Alex Tomsik, 11, participates in the candlelight vigil during the "Concert for Freedom, Diversity \\& Remembrance" at Franklin Covey Field on Wednesday, the first anniversary of the attacks that shook the nation to its core and sparked a war against terrorism.
Johanna Workman, Deseret News
NEW YORK — The words came from the president, from the families of those killed on Sept. 11, from people who watched the attacks unfold on television. Again and again on a day of memorials that marked the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Americans vowed to move on in tribute to the fallen.
"Each of us has had our hearts torn apart, but we can take those pieces and put them back together," Harold Lutnick, the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, said at a service for the firm's 658 employees who died at the World Trade Center. Lutnick's brother was among those lost.
"Together we will create something new," he said.
President Bush capped the remembrances Wednesday night with an address from Ellis Island, using the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop. He told a nation still battling terrorism that "a milestone has passed, and a mission goes on."
"For those who lost loved ones, it has been a year of sorrow, of empty places, of newborn children who will never know their fathers here on earth," Bush said.
The president acknowledged that Americans no longer felt invulnerable to their enemies' attack but vowed a relentless quest for justice and security.
"What our enemies have begun," he said, "we will finish."
Most Americans went to work and school Wednesday, but it was far from business as usual.
Authorities stayed on alert for another attack. Dust stirred by a gusty wind swirled around mourners at the trade center, doves fluttered from a Pennsylvania field and patriotic songs rang out at the Pentagon. Once evening fell, candlelight vigils nationwide carried messages of hope.
Silent tributes were held from Maine to Hawaii. Telemarketers cut back on their phone calls, politicians kept campaign ads off the air and baseball games paused at 9:11 p.m. At Yankee Stadium in New York, a memorial inscribed "We Remember" was unveiled beyond the center field fence.
"Let us live for what they died for — the United States of America," Carson Howell, who lost a brother in the Pentagon crash, said on the steps of the Idaho Capitol.
At the New Mexico State Fair, 46-year-old Keith Powell remembered the attacks with an American flag shirt. "It's a sad day, but we have to go on," he said.
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