Eternal flame flickers as sun sets

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ended a day of emotion when he lit the city's Eternal Flame in memory of the 9.11 victims. With him as the sun went down, were Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, as well as 91 heads of state.

With the wind gusting at 40mph, some in the hushed crowd at Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan were concerned. "What if - like whoosh - it gets blown out?" one spectator, wearing a stars and stripes bandanna, asked anxiously.

"It won't," said Joe Desimore, who designed it and built it. "This thing has been made to burn forever. It's got a dedicated line of piped natural gas. And even if it does momentarily blow out, we have built it with an automatic re-light mechanism. I've like tested it a hundred times," he said. "I was just thinking, heck, forever is a very long time." As people waited for the ceremony-they sat cross-legged on the grass and talked about people they knew who had died.

"When they read out Mike's name," said Sarah from Brooklyn, "my TV went momentarily blank. I'm sure Mike was up there going, 'yeah, outstanding!"

John Zipay, an engineer for Nasa at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, grew up in Queens, and because like everyone, he knew people who knew people.

"September 11 was the worst day of my life," he said. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else on this day. Being here is part of the recovery process." His best friend's father worked on the 54th floor of the north tower and for two terrible hours they were convinced he was dead. Another friend had spent nine months at the Fresh Kills landfill sight on Staten Island, sifting through the rubble of the World Trade Center on a conveyor belt. "They found nothing bigger than occasional chips of bone, and little pieces of teeth," said John.

Mayor Bloomberg kicked off the proceedings by reading from The Four Freedoms, a speech delivered by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941. Then, at 7.38pm, he handed one candle to a father who lost two sons in the World Trade Center, lifted up the second candle himself, and together, they brushed the wick against Joe Desimore's natural gas outlet - and in that combustible embrace, the Eternal Flame leapt forth.

Mr Desimore was beaming. Mayor Bloomberg stepped back and spoke some words of his own: "For our country, September 11 will always be a day of sorrow. I ignite a flame of remembrance that burns with unending brightness and lights the world."

Each of the dignatories - which included the heads of state of India and Pakistan - were then given a candle with a battery-charged electric light. As an African-American woman belted out America the Beautiful in honeyed, mellifluous tones, the crowd stood as one.

Removing their hats they sang loud and proud. It was a goose-pimple-moment. Out in the bay, as darkness fell, the Statue of Liberty loomed brighter and brighter.

It capped an emotional day that had begun before dawn, at 2am, with bagpipers marching from each of the five boroughs of New York to Ground Zero. President Bush had started his day at the Pentagon then flew to Shanksville, Pennsylvania and from there to New York where he met the families, talking to them for two hours.

He would have been moved to see Joe Desimore's Eternal Flame flickering against the darkening sky. But even more emotive, rising above and behind the flame, is the Sphere that stood in the Plaza between the two towers.

Scratched, scuffed, punctured and partially crushed, but miraculously still standing and in one piece despite both towers having fallen on top of it, the Sphere stands behind the Eternal Flame, a potent and evocative symbol if ever there was one of what was - and wasn't - destroyed on that day.