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It ahs been decided to move the event from the western edge of the 16-acre trade center site to a plaza off the southeast
corner because of construction at the site. NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the families worked out a compromise that still
keeps the ceremony in the new location but gives loved ones some minimal access to the bedrock at the bottom of the seven-story
pit that once was the trade center's basement. Many mourners feel as though that area is a grave site and say they need to
touch the ground to feel connected. This year’s Sept. 11 anniversary commemoration will be the final time victims’
families will be able to descend into the ground zero pit to touch bedrock at the site where their loved ones were slain.
The 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero is scheduled to open on September 11, 2009. Next year, in 2008, with the Freedom Tower rising
well above street level, the new Path station being erected, with both the 9/11 museum and memorial nearly half built, and
the floor of what was once called the Pit covered with construction, where would the families have Mayor Bloomberg conduct
a tribute on September 11?Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani will speak at the sixth anniversary remembrance
of the World Trade Center attack, although he will not read the names of victims. Instead he will read a passage from a text,
which has not yet been chosen. The recitation of the names will be done by firefighters, police officers and other rescue
workers. Reading aloud all the names of the dead can take more than three hours. Interspersed among the names are readings
by public officials and four moments of silence to mark the times when the two planes hit and the towers collapsed. In past
years, between 100 and 200 people have helped read the roll call. The somber reading has been the centerpiece of the annual
ceremony since the 2001 attack and has become a tradition for thousands of people who lost loved ones. Giuliani was the first
reader at the first anniversary in 2002.
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