![Picture](/uploads/9/0/8/4/9084327/268258284.jpg)
In Washington, the White House observed a moment of silence at approximately 8:46 a.m., the minute American Airlines Flight 11 hit the north tower 11 years ago. They were joined by hundreds of members of the White House staff and a full Marine color guard. A Marine trumpeter signaled the end of the ceremony by playing taps.
![Picture](/uploads/9/0/8/4/9084327/561552500.jpg)
At the memorial garden at the Pentagon, President and wife participated in a wreath-laying ceremony to honor the 184 people who died when United Flight 77 slammed into the military headquarters.
![Picture](/uploads/9/0/8/4/9084327/367632625.jpg)
❀ Guerrilla Cleaners Scrub ❀ Richard C. Hughes and Mr. Burke working on the base of the "Sphere" with rags and water.
In the belief that it ought to appear as if someone cared about the city’s second-most-prominent 9/11 memorial — Fritz Koenig’s “Sphere for Plaza Fountain” sculpture from the original World Trade Center — a guerrilla cleaning crew took matters into its own gloved hands on Thursday.
Building Blocks How the city looks and feels — and why it got that way.
The volunteer maintenance workers arrived with water buckets and plenty of rags. As golden evening light filled Battery Park, where the ‘Sphere’ has stood since 2002, they bathed and gently swabbed the sculpture’s base. A parks enforcement patrol car drove by a couple of times, stopping once for several minutes. But no one stepped out.
Maybe the officers did not object to seeing four-foot-long streaks of pigeon droppings being erased from the curving bronze forms. Perhaps they did not mind that someone had finally picked up and bagged a dead pigeon that had become part of the stony landscape around the sculpture. Maybe they figured, “Hey, someone remembered the 11th anniversary is coming up.”
Whatever the case, the constabulary offered no resistance.
That allowed the little band to finish its job, under the direction of Michael Burke, whose brother, Capt. William F. Burke Jr. of Engine Company 21, was killed on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Burke is the unofficial leader of a campaign to place the “Sphere” in the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site, and to keep it on public display in the interim.
Building Blocks How the city looks and feels — and why it got that way.
The volunteer maintenance workers arrived with water buckets and plenty of rags. As golden evening light filled Battery Park, where the ‘Sphere’ has stood since 2002, they bathed and gently swabbed the sculpture’s base. A parks enforcement patrol car drove by a couple of times, stopping once for several minutes. But no one stepped out.
Maybe the officers did not object to seeing four-foot-long streaks of pigeon droppings being erased from the curving bronze forms. Perhaps they did not mind that someone had finally picked up and bagged a dead pigeon that had become part of the stony landscape around the sculpture. Maybe they figured, “Hey, someone remembered the 11th anniversary is coming up.”
Whatever the case, the constabulary offered no resistance.
That allowed the little band to finish its job, under the direction of Michael Burke, whose brother, Capt. William F. Burke Jr. of Engine Company 21, was killed on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Burke is the unofficial leader of a campaign to place the “Sphere” in the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site, and to keep it on public display in the interim.