9/11 families mark solemn 25th anniversary with poetry, Bible verses and memories

Under a sky as crisp and clear as it was that awful day, families forever bonded by grief and pain paid solemn tribute on Friday to the souls lost a quarter century ago when terrorists in hijacked planes attacked and changed America.

Accompanied by the sound of violin and cello strings, and the occasional ringing bell — seven to be exact — loved ones, many too young to remember the attack or the people who died in it, read the names of the dead, a list that took hours to complete.

There were many Clarks, and lots of Taylors, and it took almost a half-hour just to get through the Rs. And, although some of the names were mispronounced or whispered, none of them were forgotten.

“We come every year,”  said Yaritz Franco, 33, who joined hundreds of victims’ family members at the 9/11 Memorial to remember her father, Antonio Melendez, who worked at Windows On The World. “We don’t have a place for him, so this is our grave for him.”

Melendez was on the 106th floor when the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001.

His remains, like so many others, were never recovered.

“I was 8 years old at the time,” Franco said, crying. “The pain is still the same. Every year I go back to the day, and the pain is still there.”

Mike Weinstein, 62, showed up at the commemoration Friday to remember his cousin, FDNY Firefighter Stephen Belson.

Belson, nicknamed “Mr. Ladder 24,” was assigned to Engine 1/Ladder 24 for more than 23 years, Weinstein said.

“My cousin had back surgery and he was placed on light duty,” Weinstein remembered. When the call came over, Belson drove a battalion chief to the site.

“Even though he had back surgery, he put on his gear and went into the North Tower,” Weinstein said.

They never made it out.

“I get here every year,” he said. “It’s pretty much the same atmosphere. People filing in, mostly family members. To be honest, it’s more and more people every year because families obviously have grown. You now have children or grandchildren and more and more cousins of the deceased.”

As Weinstein spoke — they were up to the ‘Ls’ by then — the solemn ceremony soldiered on, each read name a father, a brother, a girlfriend, a neighbor, a cousin, an in-law, a friend.

Some names were punctuated with a Bible verse or a line of original poetry. Other readers reminded the crowd what their dads or brothers missed, like the birth of a grandson, or a daughter’s wedding.

Or the Knicks in five.

“I don’t remember you,” one reader said of her father. “But I spent my entire life getting to know you.”

The families were joined by dignitaries including the nation’s four living former presidents — Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Bush was president at the time of the attack.

Also on hand were Vice President JD Vance, Gov. Hochul, Mayor Mamdani and former mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor when the planes struck.

Widow Terry Strada, whose husband was killed on 9/11, sent Vance back to Washington with a message for President Trump.

“How can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played,” Strada said to a round of applause.

“For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” Strada said. “They withheld evidence; they broke promises, both public and private. It’s been one betrayal after another. President Trump can still change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying.”

Strada, one of the lead plaintiffs in the ongoing 9/11 victims’ families lawsuit against Saudi Arabia, asked Vance to send a message to Trump to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for the terror attacks.

And, as if the ceremony weren’t poignant enough, organizers added a tribute to the men and women who have since died from 9/11-related diseases like cancer and respiratory ailments, a number that has since surpassed those who died 25 years ago.

Each year six bells are rung to mark the moments when four hijacked planes hit each of the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a rural field in Pennsylvania, and to commemorate the moment when each of the towers collapsed.

A seventh bell was added this year to honor those who were there that day but died years later.

Bridget Gormley traveled from Marine Park, Brooklyn, to the memorial to honor her father, Firefighter William Gormley, who died of 9/11-related bladder cancer in 2017.

She said her father was “well aware” of the dangers in the air as he worked recovering bodies for weeks at Ground Zero.

“He had a very gallows sense of humor,” she said. “It’s like this laugh and cry sort of mentality. And even when they were down here, they were kidding among themselves, like, ‘This is all going to kill us one day.’”

Gormley, 35, said that addition of the seventh bell makes the narrative around the day “whole.”

“It’s an acknowledgement of these people that died after 9/11 from their cancers, the people that are sick now, and all the people that don’t know they’ll get sick, but unfortunately will not be here,” she said. “I had to fight for the recognition, and I think we’re finally at this point where it’s been acknowledged now and seen.”