Queens Woman Pitches Ticker Tape Parade For 9/11 First Responders

By ERICA PITZI

PIX11.com

12:07 p.m. EDT, September 14, 2011
QUEENS, N.Y. (WPIX)— If one woman gets her way, there will be a ticker tape parade right along Broadway at the Canyon of Heros, for the first responders of 9/11.

The day would be May 25, 2012 -- marking 10 years after the last piece of steel was removed from Ground Zero.

"They didn't think about if they were going to live or die, they are the reason that area exists in the beautiful way it exists today," said Jill Singer.

This confident Queens woman committed to bringing the community together to show gratitude for the first responders.

Singer says the idea came to her while watching a Yankee game last month. She remembers attending the ticker tape parade when the Yanks won the World Series two years ago.

"They are called heros, 9/11 responders are called heros, why can't the city say thank you through a ticker tape parade?" asked Singer.

So she pitched her idea to Community Board 1 this week and it passed. World Trade Center Committee Chair Catherine McVay Hughes voted in favor.

"I've lived here for two decades, over looking other ticker tapes for sport championships," said Hughes. "But it's about time, we actually have a ticker tape parade for our real heros."

Real heros like TJ Gilmartin, Singer's boyfriend, whom she met last year, while fighting for first responders rights in Washington.

Gilmartin spent two straight weeks working on the rubble of the World Trace Center and welcomes the idea of a parade.

"It would lift the spirits. Nobody is asking for any money, just a thank you," said Gilmartin. "The greatest city in the world can't say thank you to the guys who ran in, meanwhile everybody else ran out?"

Mayor Michael Bloomberg still has to give his nod of approval, and NYPD has to approve a parade permit.
http://www.wpix.com/news/local/wpix-911-ticker-tape-parade,0,5197099.story

Obama Ground Zero visit details: President to visit first responders, lay wreath amid tight security

President Obama will make no triumphal speech when he visits Ground Zero on Thursday to mark the death of Osama Bin Laden - the monster who brought the Twin Towers down.

Instead, Obama will lay a wreath in the memory of the thousands who died in the Sept. 11 attacks and save his words for private chats with relatives and friends of the victims gathered in the crucible of New York City's pain.

"The power of that requires no words," White House spokesman Jay Carney said of the planned wreath-laying ceremony. "It will be a bittersweet moment for many of the families."

Obama is expected to spend about three hours at Ground Zero - his first visit to the site since 2008, when he was running for president.

The President has marked subsequent 9/11 anniversaries in Washington and was expected to return to New York this September for the 10th anniversary.

The successful killing of Bin Laden on Sunday, which capped a frustrating, decade-long manhunt for the terrorist, changed Obama's itinerary, officials said.

Before going Downtown, Obama will meet with some of the city's Bravest who lost colleagues in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Although the police have received no credible reports of threats against Obama, there will be numerous street closings wherever the presidential motorcade rolls, sources said.

Mailboxes and garbage cans along the motorcade route will be removed to deny would-be terrorists a place to plant a bomb - and manholes covers may be welded shut.

Police sharpshooters will be patrolling the rooftops, sources said.

In addition to a "major uniformed police presence," sources said plainclothes cops will be out in force to protect the President.

Also, PATH service in and out of the World Trade Center will be suspended while Obama is in the neighborhood.

Obama's visit comes just days after he green-lighted the Navy SEAL assault that wiped out Bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan.

Obama's upcoming visit harkens back to then-President George W. Bush's journey to the site days after the 9/11 attacks, when he famously grabbed a bullhorn and rallied the nation from atop the pile of rubble.

Bush, who was one of the first people Obama called when Bin Laden was bagged, declined an invitation to join in the visit to Ground Zero.

Obama has also invited Rudy Giuliani, who was New York's mayor during those dark days, sources said.

With Celeste Katz, Rocco Parascandola and Kenneth Lovett

agendar@nydailynews.com

58 storeys and counting... 'Freedom Tower' rises above Ground Zero to take its place on the New York skyline

: Its steel frame, already clad in glass on lower floors, now stands 58 stories tall and is starting to inch above many of the skyscrapers that ring the site

On top of the world: Ironworkers align steel columns high in the sky

The black-granite fountains and reflecting pools that mark the footprints of the fallen twin towers are almost finished.

The memorial plaza won't be complete when it opens on Sept. 11, 2011, and a tour of the site last week makes clear that work around it will continue for years.

More...

• Mutilated body of 400lb man found inside duffel bag in blood-soaked apartment

Mud is still plentiful at ground level, and for now the site is dominated by the same concrete-grey shades that blanketed lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks.

But the agency that owned the trade center and has spent nearly a decade rebuilding it is aiming to deliver a memorial experience on 9/11/11 that closes one chapter and ushers in a new experience, where ground zero again becomes part of the city's everyday fabric.

'We want people to be able to see that downtown does have this incredible future to it,' said Chris Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. 'The work will not be done on that day. What we hope will be done is the sense of frustration.'

For now, the complexity and scale of the construction is evident in every corner.

Workers labor around the clock. During the busiest shifts, around 2,800 people — mostly men — labour amid tangles and ravines of steel. In one steel cavern that will become a transit hub concourse, showers of orange sparks fly as welders install trusses weighing up to 50 tons.

From the top of One World Trade, the view is spectacular, as it was from the twin towers, even though the building stands at 680 feet, less than halfway to its planned 1,776-foot height.

Visitors to the upper floors can see the grand sweep of the Hudson River and New York Harbor, dotted with container ships, all the way to Sandy Hook at the northern tip of the Jersey Shore. People at ground level can now see the tower, too, from a growing number of places in the city and across the river in New Jersey.

A huge portion of the reconstruction of the trade center is taking place below ground. The underground halls that house the memorial are cavernous, and in their unfinished state look like some unexplored temple in an Indiana Jones movie.

The huge boxes that hold the waterfall pits visible from the surface are somehow suspended from the ceiling, held up by pillars that don't seem big enough to support the blocks' massive weight.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368388/A-decade-9-11-Freedom-Tower-rises-ashes-Ground-Zero-tenth-anniversary-New-York-attack.html#ixzz1HIcdC6AR

Reservations for 9/11 Memorial to Begin in July

Work continues with just six months until 10-year anniversary

Reserving tickets to visit the Sept. 11 memorial will begin in July, as the project is on schedule to open on the 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks, the memorial foundation president said Friday.

The public will be able to begin visiting the memorial on Sept. 12, 2011, a day after the families of victims attend a memorial service and tour the site, which will feature two waterfalls and the names of survivors inscribed in bronze

He stressed that tickets will be free. Visitors will only have to “pick a date, pick a time, print out their passes and come down,” he said.

For years after the memorial opens, access will be limited to a set number of people and mourners.

Ultimately, visitors will be able to approach the memorial and its green spaces and cobblestone plazas from all sides.

But for years visitors will be surrounded by construction of skyscrapers and a transit hub and may only use one entrance, and organizers will observe strict capacity limits for safety reasons.

Preliminary plans call for a limit of 1,500 visitors at a time, with special consideration being given to the relatives of Sept. 11 victims.

The 1,776-foot 1 World Trade Center, formerly known as the Freedom Tower, is being built just northwest of the memorial site and won't open until 2013. Hundreds of trees will still need to be planted, and cobblestones will need to be filled in to the 8-acre memorial plaza after Sept. 11, 2011.

A transit hub is under construction at the site until at least 2015, along with at least one other skyscraper planned for the site.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Reservations-for-911-Memorial-Tours-117835763.html