NEW YORK — There were still the tearful messages to loved ones, clutches of photos and flowers, and moments of silence. But 11 years after Sept. 11, 2001, Americans appeared to enter a new, scaled-back chapter of collective mourning for the worst terror attack in US history.
Crowds gathered, as always, at the World Trade Center site in New York, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania memorial Tuesday to mourn the nearly 3,000 victims of the 2001 terror attacks, reciting their names and remembering with music, tolling bells, and prayer. But they came in fewer numbers, ceremonies were less elaborate, and some cities canceled their remembrances altogether. A year after the milestone 10th anniversary, some said the memorials may have reached an emotional turning point.
‘‘It’s human nature, so people move on,’’ said Wanda Ortiz, of New York City, whose husband, Emilio Ortiz, was killed in the trade center’s north tower, leaving behind her and their 5-month-old twin daughters. ‘‘My concern now is . . . how I keep the memory of my husband alive.’’
It was also a year when politicians largely took a back seat to grieving families; no elected officials spoke at all at New York’s 3½-hour ceremony. President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney pulled negative campaign ads and avoided rallies, with the president laying a wreath at the Pentagon ceremony and visiting wounded soldiers at a Maryland hospital. And beyond the victims of the 2001 attacks, attention was paid to the wars that followed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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In Middletown, N.J., a bedroom community that lost 37 residents in the attacks, town officials laid a wreath at the entrance to the park in a small, silent ceremony. Last year, 3,700 people attended a remembrance with speeches, music, and names read.
‘‘This year,’’ said Deputy Mayor Stephen Massell, ‘‘I think less is more.’’
Some worried that moving on would mean Sept. 11 will fade from memory.
‘‘It’s been 11 years already,’’ said Michael Reneo, whose sister-in-law, Daniela Notaro, was killed at the trade center. ‘‘And unfortunately for some, the reality of this day seems to be fading as the years go by. . . . I hope we never lose focus on what really happened here.’’
In New York, a crowd of fewer than 200 swelled to about 1,000 by late Tuesday morning, as family members laid roses and made paper rubbings of their loved ones’ names etched onto the Sept. 11 memorial. A few hundred attended ceremonies at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa., fewer than in years past.
As bagpipes played at the year-old Sept. 11 memorial in New York, families holding balloons, flowers, and photos of their loved ones bowed their heads in silence at 8:46 a.m., the moment that the first hijacked jetliner crashed into the trade center’s north tower. Bells tolled to mark the moments that planes crashed into the second tower, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, and the moments that each tower collapsed.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, laid a white floral wreath at the Pentagon, above a concrete slab that said ‘‘Sept. 11, 2001 — 937 am.’’ Obama later recalled the horror of the attacks, declaring, ‘‘Our country is safer and our people are resilient.’’
Vice President Joe Biden remembered the 40 victims of the plane that crashed in a field south of Pittsburgh, saying he understood 11 years haven’t diminished memories.