"We did things to show we are proud to be American. We had hot dogs and lemonade," she said. "We had a moment of silence for everything." Employees wrote notes detailing why they were thankful to live in this country. The notes were slipped into balloons that were let go.

This year, though, there was less enthusiasm for the event. "It was kind of a mixed reaction. Some people were like, well, we really need to remember those people. Other people were like, well, we really need to move on and quit celebrating this."

That upsets Dalley, who said 9/11 "really opened up my eyes to how lucky we are to be here. . . . I really never had anything affect me to where I was grateful for what I have. Because of what happened, it will probably stay with me forever."

Loata Toki, a 17-year-old senior at the Horizonte Instruction and Training Center downtown, sobbed softly as she described how she can't stop thinking about that shocking day two years ago.

"Sept. 11 is always on my mind," Toki said during an interview of a group of students that was arranged by the high school. "Every time I see an American flag or something, I'm always reminded."

She also has something else to remind her of 9/11. Her father, a truck driver who is on the road for months at a time, made a trip to New York City this summer to see the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

"He went to ground zero. We have a picture of him there," Toki said. The brief visit was emotional for her father, too. Her mother hadn't wanted him to go, fearing what might happen there.

But Toki encouraged her father and recounted his reaction to the scene. "He just started crying. He said he was happy that he went and got to see ground zero. And that was just for like 10 minutes. I was really happy that he went."

Don McClenny, 51, a former military and defense department employee who now owns a business in Sandy, is struggling to maintain the optimism he felt for this country after the attacks.

"I guess I'm disappointed," McClenny said. "I believe that the opportunity for increasing patriotism has been lost. . . . Those people outside America watching us, we've given the Muslims plenty of ammunition for their jihad."

That ammunition is this country's moral ambiguity on many issues, he said.

"The threat is the United States' continued insistence that everybody else in the world has to accept our moral values and our culture and not find what we do offensive," McClenny said.

The events of 9/11, he said, were "a wake-up call that we are only part of a global culture, and many, many nations outside America see us as a poor example and, as a matter of fact, a threat."