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 In New York, families of the victims read their names in a solemn
and poignantly familiar pattern, watched over by service members in
their dress uniforms.
Emblematic of the generations affected, children who were not old
enough to remember their late relatives or had yet to meet them
participated in the roll call.
"We are so blessed to have you as an angel and we are empty without
you, we love you very much," said Daniel Pagan, who lost his cousin
Melissa Candida Doi in the attack.
Families hugged each other close, some carrying photographs or
wearing t-shirts depicting lost loved ones, or bearing placards with
the words 'we will never forget.'
First responders were thanked numerous times by the family members
for their work on what became known as 'the pile.'
Many of those who were first on the scene and those who worked for
weeks afterwards searching through the rubble are still suffering
from various illnesses brought on by the toxic air.
Mourners stood at the empty footprint of the World Trade Center Twin
Towers, toppled by two hijacked airliners on that clear, sunny
morning in 2001.
 "It doesn't get any easier," said Malcolm Dean, a first responder
and paramedic with the New York Fire Department on 9/11. He lost his
younger brother William and colleagues.
"Fourteen years later it's not any easier standing here than it was
the first year and the second year."
Music and the soothing sounds of the waterfalls emptying into
reflecting pools at the at 9/11 Memorial and Museum formed a
backdrop as families placed flowers against their loved ones' names
engraved in the bronze panels.
A veteran's trumpet salute closed the ceremony after nearly four
hours, with the emptying plaza hushed and subdued.
"We come here every year. We live in New Jersey. The crowds keep
getting less, but my wife and I, as long as we're breathing, we'll
be here," said Tom Acquaviva, who with his wife Josephine, lost
their son Paul when the towers fell.
"No remains were ever found, so basically this is his cemetery," he
said, adding: "Couldn't ask for a better son."
Hijackers crashed two other commercial jets into the Pentagon in
Arlington, Virginia and into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
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The New York ceremony, where politicians past and present mixed with
families but gave no speeches, was punctuated by moments of silence
and bell ringing to mark the moments when each of the four planes
crashed and when the towers fell.
In Washington, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama,
joined by staff, bowed their heads for a brief moment of silence on
the south lawn of the White House to mark the anniversary.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter led a remembrance ceremony for
relatives of those killed at the Pentagon.
Relatives of the 40 passengers and crew members who died aboard
United Airlines Flight 93 gathered at the newly dedicated Flight 93
National Memorial in Shanksville.
The passengers fought back against the hijackers, who crashed the
plane upside down at nearly 600 mph.
In New York, the buzz of increased commerce from new residential and
business towers has returned a large degree of normalcy to the area,
known after the attacks as Ground Zero.
The day also honors those who were killed in 1993, when a car bomb
tore through one of the parking garage of one of the towers.
Next to the 16-acre site where the Twin Towers stood is the newly
opened 1 World Trade Center, the tallest skyscraper in the Western
hemisphere.
The first plane slammed into the North tower at 8:46 a.m., followed
by a second plane hitting the South tower at 9:03 a.m. Within two
hours, both towers had collapsed, engulfing lower Manhattan in acrid
dust and smoke and debris that burned for days.
(Writing and additional reporting by Daniel Bases in New York and
Ayesha Rascoe in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham and Bernadette
Baum)
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