Memorial Mass, ceremony marks 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed 6, including 2 Long Islanders

With no grave nearby to visit, Vito Rodriguez of Baldwin Harbor makes year-round pilgrimages to the World Trade Center site, where his pregnant sister — his only sister — was killed in the 1993 bombing. She was later laid to rest in Manta, in her native Ecuador.

While every visit to the trade center memorial is meaningful, he noted, anniversaries are particularly important.

"This is my place that I can connect better with her spiritually," Rodriguez, 59, a retired city sanitation mechanic, said on Thursday at the annual ceremony at which the name of his sister, 35-year-old Monica Rodriguez Smith of Long Island, was recited along with those of the five other victims killed in the attacks 33 years ago.

Among the dead were two Long Islanders. The bombing presaged the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

A memorial Mass was celebrated on Thursday morning at St. Peter’s Church, blocks from the site, followed by the ceremony at the now-rebuilt complex where a bell tolled at 12:18 p.m.: the moment in 1993 when a terrorist truck bomb exploded, having been parked in a public garage beneath the towers.

At the Mass, Charles Maikish, the former director of the Port Authority’s World Trade Department, led the prayer of the faithful, to which those gathered responded: "Lord, hear our prayer."

He prayed "that all our leaders will strive to bring peace to areas of violence and justice to all who live in fear" and that "during this season of atonement, that the agents of terrorism and violence will come to see the futility of their ways and turn to the paths of peace and reconciliation."

The Long Islanders were Rodriguez Smith, of Seaford, who was weeks from giving birth and was working as a mechanical unit secretary for the Port Authority; and John DiGiovanni, 45, of Valley Stream, a sales manager for Kerr Chemicals.

Thousands were injured.

On Thursday at the trade center’s memorial reflecting pools around which the names of the slain from 1993 and 2001 are etched — the families of the 1993 dead placed roses in the grooves.

That bombing was perpetrated by Islamic extremists indignant at U.S. entanglements in the Middle East, support for Israel and the killings of Palestinians. In letters sent at the time to newspapers, the 1993 attackers demanded policy changes, such as ending that support.

'Terror for terror'

Mastermind Ramzi Yousef called the attack "terror for terror."

He wanted the explosion to topple one tower, causing the collapsing debris to knock down the other tower.

He hoped to kill 250,000 Americans, a death toll modeled on what he thought to be fatalities from America’s World War II atomic bombings of Japan. (The actual death toll ranged from 110,000 to 210,000, according to a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimate.)

Yousef was later convicted of planning the attack and sentenced to life imprisonment. Five accomplices also were convicted.

In remarks on Thursday at the memorial ceremony, the current Port Authority executive director, Kathryn Garcia, noted that the 1993 attack heralded a new world.

"We didn’t know it then, but we would learn that our resilience in 1993 would be needed in the years to come," she said. "It would teach us how to respond to future tragedy and uncertainty that has been the undercurrent of this story."

The aftermath of the attack catalyzed an era of ubiquitous security measures — public spaces restricted, streets near vulnerable buildings closed, security consultants hired, ID badges issued and required; and the installation of concrete stanchions, turnstiles, alarms, metal detectors, security cameras and X-ray machines.