At 8:46 a.m., bells chimed from St. Peter's Episcopal Church and First Baptist Church to signal the moment the first plane struck the World Trade Center eleven years ago to the day. Emergency personnel, city officials and community members gathered at the Law Enforcement Center to remember those who lost their lives on Sept. 11.

Members of the Honor Guard from several agencies laid and saluted a wreath at the memorial fountain. Attendees bowed their head in a moment of silence after which the Floyd County Sheriff's Office Rev. David Thornton recited a prayer of peace.

The ceremony concluded with the chiming of a silver bell by the Rome/Floyd County Fire Department.

8:46 a.m. - the North Tower Fell

9:03 a.m. - the South Tower Fell

9:37 a.m - The Pentagon was attacked

10:07 a.m. - Plane went down in Somerset County, Pennsylvania

previously posted

A ceremony at the Rome-Floyd County Law Enforcement Center this morning is planned to remember the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

On that fateful morning, terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center, another into the Pentagon and another plane crashed in Shanksville, Pa.

The death toll was near 3,000.

Today’s ceremony will begin at 8:46 a.m., the time the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, with the ringing of the bells of downtown Rome churches. Also today at 11 a.m. the color guards from American Legion Shanklin-Attaway Post No. 5 will be at Winthrop Court Assisted Living to perform a flag ceremony and present a 21 gun salute.

The Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony at ground zero in New York has been stripped of politicians this year. For the first time, elected officials won’t speak.

From the first anniversary in 2002, the date has been limned with questions about how — or even whether — to try to separate the Sept. 11 that is about personal loss from the 9/11 that reverberates through public life.

The answers are complicated for Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. She feels politicians’ involvement can lend gravity to the remembrances, but she empathizes with the reasons for silencing officeholders at the New York ceremony this year.

“It is the one day, out of 365 days a year, where, when we invoke the term ‘9/11,’ we mean the people who died and the events that happened,” rather than the political and cultural layers the phrase has accumulated, said Burlingame, who’s on the board of the organization that announced the change in plans this year.

“So I think the idea that it’s even controversial that politicians wouldn’t be speaking is really rather remarkable.”

Click to see a Sept. 11, 2001, timeline of events.