Hundreds mark 30-year World Trade Center bombing anniversary in somber Manhattan ceremony

Like many who traveled to lower Manhattan on Sunday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the first attack on the World Trade Center that left six people dead and more than 1,000 injured, Ed Smith came to honor somebody he loved deeply.

Smith, formerly of Seaford and now a resident of Arizona, traveled across the nation for the somber ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. He came not just to remember his beloved wife, Monica Rodriguez Smith, but also to honor the unborn son who died with his 35-year-old pregnant wife — the infant he never got to cradle in his arms.

“He’d be 30 years old right now,” Smith, now 60, said during a commemoration at the Sept. 11 memorial, which was followed by a Mass at St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church on nearby Barclay Street. “That’s very sad, to think what could have been, what he didn’t get to experience.”

Smith and hundreds of other people braved biting cold to attend the ceremony at the north memorial pool to remember those killed in the Feb. 26, 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center, which presaged the destruction of the 9/11 attacks eight years later.

Relatives of the six who died, and survivors of the attack, were joined by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, along with scores of FDNY members and NYPD officers, to remember the lives lost and destroyed during the attack.

Many in the crowd clutched flowers and wiped away tears as they relived the pain of that day. NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell and FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh were among those who placed flowers on the names of those who died that are etched at the monument.

“I am sure for those of you who still have a missing chair at the dinner table, time stands still — you still have that loss,” Hochul told the crowd. “I just want to tell you I grieve along with you. The words that I can give you will never heal the scars, the pain, but just know that the memory of your loved ones will never dissipate.”

Hochul read the names of the victims, who also included dental equipment salesman John DiGiovanni of Valley Stream, who was 45 when he died. Hochul said DiGiovanni was a “passionate Mets fan,” with “a zest for life like only a New Yorker can achieve.”

Later, at the Mass at St. Peter’s, retired World Trade Center director Charles Maikish, said people who gathered at the church had a bond that was “forged in crisis and loss.”

“Our sense of loss will always be with us,” he said.

Authorities determined that a small cell of Islamic extremists detonated 1,200 pounds of explosives, packed inside a rented van parked in the below-ground garage of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, detonated around lunchtime on Feb. 26, 1993. 

Six men were convicted of the 1993 bombing and sentenced to prison. Authorities said they had connections to a metropolitan-area mosque and global Islamic terrorist networks. A seventh suspect remains at large and is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list.

During the Mass at St. Peter’s, Father Jarlath Quinn pointed out all six victims were Catholic, and many of their family members were in attendance. He reminded them that the resurrection of Jesus — his life after death — is the cornerstone of their faith.

“When our earthly journey is over, no matter how it happens, tragically like your families or whatever way it happens, life is changed but not ended,” he said. “It’s difficult to grasp that in the time of mourning and in a time of grief.”

The governor said Rodriguez Smith, an immigrant from Ecuador, was “a first-generation immigrant who was here living the American dream, who worked tirelessly to build a better life so that she and her unborn baby could live something that people around the world aspire to.”

That fatal Friday was supposed to be her last day of work before she went on maternity leave to give birth to a boy the couple planned to name Edward or Eddie, Smith said. “Full of life," he said. "Those would be the words I would use to describe her.”