Rev. Raynor

        Thursday morning, standing near the seven-story pit in lower Manhattan that once was the site of the World Trade Center's twin towers, the Rev. Andrea Ruehrwein Raynor could not help but feel the presence of God.

        “There is no point trying to make sense of what happened here,” said the Rev. Ms. Raynor, a Cincinnati native who works as a hospice chaplain in the suburbs of New York City.

        “But this is very sacred ground. God is present here.”

        Thursday at 10:29 a.m. — the precise minute that the second tower collapsed after the terrorist attack the morning of Sept. 11 — the Rev. Ms. Raynor was among the thousands who gathered at the site for a silent service marking the end of the cleanup of a patch of ground that will be the final resting place for hundreds of Sept. 11 victims whose remains were never found.

ONLINE COVERAGE

Full coverage of the Ground Zero cleanup from The Associated Press

        She earned the right to be there — every other week for the past eight months, the United Methodist minister has been one of about 60 volunteer chaplains of many faiths working shifts at the temporary morgue set up at the World Trade Center site.

        Thursday, she watched as an empty, flag-draped stretcher — symbolizing the still-missing victims — was carried up a 500-foot ramp from the pit where thousands of rescue workers had searched for months for remains.

        “It was an incredible day,” the Rev. Ms. Raynor said Thursday from her home in Rye, N.Y. “The silence, the lack of speeches, the sense of awe that hung over everything — it was entirely appropriate for this place.”

        In her work at the morgue, she would bless remains as they were brought up from the pit — entire bodies or simply body parts.

Members of the clergy have worked alongside rescue workers, firefighters and construction crews daily since the Sept. 11 attacks at the World Trade Center. (Photo courtesy of Rev. Andrea Ruehrwein Raynor) | ZOOM |

        She spent hours sitting and talking with the emergency medical technicians and firefighters who were working around the clock at Ground Zero, helping them to deal with the horrors they confronted every day.

        “It's going to be hard for these people who have been doing this work, day after day, month after month,” she said.

        “They raked through this debris every day, sometimes with their bare hands, only to come up with nothing more than a bone fragment,” the Rev. Ms. Raynor said. “They will keep those images with them forever.”

        Today, she will work her last volunteer shift at the temporary morgue. When it is over, she said, she will feel a “sense of privilege for having had the opportunity to help.”

        “But what I will feel most is a profound sense of awe over the basic goodness and decency of the bulk of humanity,” she said. “I've seen that here.”
       

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