LOWER MANHATTAN — Twenty years after Stephen Knapp Jr.’s father was killed when terrorists exploded a massive truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center, the pain still hasn’t subsided.
“You keep going, but sometimes it feels like just yesterday that it happened,” Knapp, 38, said Tuesday on the 20th anniversary of the attack. “It will always be hard.”
Knapp and more than 100 others, including survivors, victims' family members, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Mayor David Dinkins, gathered at the 9/11 Memorial for a brief ceremony to commemorate the Feb. 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing that left six people dead and more than 1,000 people injured.
A moment of silence was observed at 12:18 p.m., the moment of the deadly blast.
Knapp then read his 47-year-old father's name, along with the names of two other victims, John DiGiovanni, 45, and Robert Kirkpatrick, 61. Another’s victim’s son, William Macko Jr., read his 57-year-old father’s name, along with the names of victims Wilfredo Mercado, 37, and Monica Rodriguez Smith, 35, who also lost her unborn child.
Family members then placed white roses by the six victims' names, which are inscribed in bronze alongside the names of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, on the north side of the memorial's northern reflecting pool.
"He was a simple man, but a great man," Knapp said of his father, the chief mechanical maintenance supervisor for the World Trade Center, as he choked backed tears after placing roses on the inscribed name. "He loved what he did — and we'll always love him."
