The crowd lined up before the opening, clustering around the barricade across from Ground Zero.
A police officer opened the gate right at 8:30 a.m., surprised where they were headed — O’Hara’s Pub, at the corner of Greenwich and Cedar streets, which has become a destination for many every Sept. 11.
Nearby, the mayor, four ex-presidents and host of survivors and family members of the victims stood for the solemn hours-long ceremony honoring by name each of the 2,753 people killed in the terrorist attack.
At the pub, a more intimate remembrance was taking place. Since 2002, first responders and others have made the pilgrimage from around the world to bend their elbows and be with each other at O’Hara’s, honoring the thousands who died on that day.
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Carlos Mariduena was 23 and in the U.S. Army on Sept. 11. Born and raised in Soundview in The Bronx, he now lives in Texas. But he’s made it back up to New York City seven times for the anniversary, and always goes to O’Hara’s, where the memorial is played on TVs around the bar and restaurant.
“Sept. 11 changed everybody’s lives in one way or the other,” he said, sitting at the end of the bar soon after it opened. “What I did every year in my life after that is tied to 9/11.”
Mariduena served six tours overseas, deployed to Iraq and Oman and Kuwait. He later joined his local fire department, and is now a fire marshal for the city of Copperas Cove.
On this 25th anniversary, he was joined by his longtime friend Colton Christman, whose mom served in the same firehouse as Mariduena.
Although he’s a police officer, Christman is a self-described fire buff; last year, he bought a decommissioned FDNY truck that was in service on 9/11 during his first-ever trip to the city and drove it back to Texas.
Christman planned his second visit around the anniversary — and O’Hara’s. Twenty-five years earlier, he was in daycare in Kaleen, Texas, as his mom took her hiring exam to join the local fire department.
“This is the life that I was always around,” he said. Before the bell rang for the first of many moments of silence, Mariduena asked the bartender for the bar’s photo album with images from the days and weeks and months after the disaster.
Christman slowly went through each page, stopping at every photo and caption.
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There’s the view from the roof of the bar two days after, crumbled metal and steel below. A crushed car parked outside the corner, the green and gold O’Hara’s sign still up despite the building’s damage. The photos of police officers searching for any potential remains through the floors of the bar, when it was dark and covered in dust.
“I want to honor the folks in our own way,” Mariduena said.
O’Hara’s first opened in 1983 and re-opened six months after Sept. 11, becoming a haven for people who wanted a break after working on the pile across the street.
On that first anniversary in 2002, people started putting patches on the wall. They haven’t stopped, adding thousands from around the world wherever there’s space alongside photos honoring firefighters and others who died.
Each year the crowd grows throughout the day. The moments of silence are observed, bringing a stillness to the bustling bar.
Jamie Arnold landed in New York City at 2 a.m. Friday from southern California, joined by friends, including Amanda Holloway, a district attorney investigator in San Bernardino county.
“We can remember exactly where we were 25 years ago today. We knew exactly what we were doing,” the 45-year-old kindergarten teacher said. “And it changed our world, and our lives.”
Arnold took a patch from the bureau of investigations where Holloway works and stapled it into the wall nearby. So did Shawnie Dimick, who traveled with her husband and colleagues to staple a patch from the Mohave fire department.
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Andreas Burwitz and fellow volunteer firefighters from Bergen auf Rügen in Germany made their second trip to O’Hara’s after visiting firehouses around New York.
He struggled through broken English to explain why it was “very important” for him to be in New York City today, and at O’Hara’s.
“I don’t know the word in English,” he said, before a colleague helped him out.
“Thankful.”
Kevin Doyle was a police officer working in central booking at 100 Centre St. on Sept. 11. He ended up working at the official city morgue at Bellevue Hospital but then was deployed by the Navy, where he was in the reserves.
“I just felt we had to do something, and I would have liked to have stayed but the Navy called me,” he said.
Doyle’s first trip to O’Hara’s was after the first anniversary, when what’s now the site of a memorial and museum “was just a big pit out there.”
“The wind was incredible, so all this dust was flying, and then we all came in here,” he said.
He was joined Friday by friends from the Navy and from Staten Island, where he grew up. Although many have moved away from New York City, to Florida and the Jersey Shore, they found their way back to O’Hara’s like they did years ago.
“It became a tradition,” he said. “It’s part of a tradition.”
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