Last of towers is removed, first step in rebuilding taken

The last body removed from the site of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center was a symbolic one.
A folded American flag atop a stretcher represented the 1,721 men and women whose remains were not found through eight difficult months of sifting through and removing 1.8 million tons of concrete, steel and debris. The bodies of 1,102 were identified.
What remains at ground zero is a 16-acre hole in the ground, seven stories deep. It is hallowed ground, the place where 343 firefighters and 60 police officers died alongside 2,420 other people who went to work on the morning of September 11, 2001, with no reason to expect that anything extraordinary was going to happen. No reason to expect that they would become a part of history. No reason to expect that they would never see their loved ones again.
A ceremony marking the end of clean-up and recovery efforts at the World Trade Center began at 10:29 a.m. Thursday, the hour and minute that the second of the two towers collapsed in a cloud of dust and smoke It was held on May 30, the traditional date of Memorial Day. It was solemn. It was quiet. It was fitting. It marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.
Time to rebuild
New York City will begin rebuilding at the site of the towers. There will be a memorial. And there will be commerce. That site will not be permitted to stand as a symbol of the damage and pain the terrorists inflicted. It will become a testimony to national resolve and a willingness and ability to rebound, even from unexpected and devastating blows.
For the people who lost husband, wives, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, life will never be the same. But they, too, will rebuild. They will rebuild their lives as best they can because they know that is what their loved ones would want.
Those families will never be the same. The United States may never be the same. The challenge for both is to not allow Sept. 11 to diminish us as a people or a nation.
That is a daunting challenge, and it requires each of us to remain committed to providing a safe America while protecting a free America.
We cannot allow the pain we suffered at the hands of terrorists to be converted into a fear that blinds us to the role our constitutional freedoms have played in making this a great nation.
Whatever memorial is built in New York will be meaningless if in future years we can no longer call America the land of the free and home of the brave.