Beautifully Moving 9/11 Memorial Service at New 9/11 Museum

I have just watched, on BBC News, the memorial service for 9/11 at the new 9/11 museum.  I think the new museum is underground in the hole that was left by the twin towers.  The museum is very stark with walls of concrete and inside there is a pillar upon which photographs and other memorabilia and words have been written by the rescue teams as they cleared the area.

They decided to keep the pillar for the museum.  They did the same thing with a concrete staircase that weighs about 60 tons.  They removed it from the rubble that was left of the twin towers and retained it for the museum, which was quite a feat of engineering.   It runs parallel with the actual descending staircase to the museum.

President Obama gave the opening speech in his usual eloquent way but everyone who followed was equally as eloquent and the whole memorial service was magnificently staged in a very simple and pure way.

President Obama referred to a part-time firefighter who worked in the twin towers in the financial sector who gave his life to save others.  He repeatedly led people away down stairs that were hardly visible in all the smoke.  He went downstairs and came back up saving more and more lives until the tower collapsed whereupon he was taken away for ever.

This particular gentleman wore a red handkerchief (bandana) to protect himself from the dust.  For a while they did not know who he was.  He was just another lost person amongst the almost 3,000 until his mother recognised the fact that her son always used a red handkerchief and of course she knew he worked in the tower and so we now know who this brave soul was: Welles Crowther.

Although Welles was singled out by Obama, he represented all the other fantastically brave people, most of them in the rescue services, who gave their lives for others.

It was a very moving memorial service.

Clearly, this post has nothing to do with cats but I just felt I had to jot something down because, as I say, it was a beautifully put together memorial in a very moving place.