The President, quoting from the Old Testament, read a passage from Psalm 46 to thousands of anguished families gathered near the 9/11 memorial. The psalm, which sheds light on the power of God in times of tragedy, was well received by the public. Courtesy of Mediaite, the text has been transcribed:
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear, even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
Though its waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling, there’s a river whose streams shall make glad the City of God, the holy place of the Tabernacle of the Most High. She shall not be moved.
God shall help her just at the break of dawn.
The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved.
He uttered his voice.
The earth melted.
The Lord of Hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come behold the works of the Lord who has made desolations in the Earth.
He makes wars cease to the ends of the Earth.
He breaks the bough and cuts the spear in two.
He burns the chariot in fire.
Be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations.
I will be exalted in the Earths.
The Lord of Hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Former President George W. Bush, who aptly referenced the Gettysburg Address Saturday during his remarks at the Flight 93 crash site in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, spoke after the President and read Abraham Lincoln’s famous letter to Mrs. Bixby. For those unfamiliar with the Bixby family, towards the end of the Civil War -- after years of unremitting bloodshed -- Lincoln received a dispatch from Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew informing him that one of his constituents, Lydia Bixby, was now the mother of five brave soliders who perished in the war. While scholars later affirmed this was historically inaccurate, and not all of her sons died, President Bush used the letter -- which Lincoln wrote in 1864 -- to poignantly capture the feelings and sentiments of the American people today.
Former President George W. Bush read the “Bixby letter” of condolence that President Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1864 to a mother who lost five sons in the Civil War:
“I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”
Retired NYPD Officer James Smith, accompanied by his daughter Patricia, remembered his wife Moira Smith, an NYPD officer who ran into the towers time and time again trying to save whomever she could. She never came out as the south tower collapsed, taking her life along with hundreds more.
“Mom I’m proud to be your daughter. You will always be my hero and the pride of New York City,” said 12-year-old Patricia Smith.
The reading of names continued, as a memorial service at the Pentagon, which was stuck by American Airlines Flight 77 at 9:37 a.m. began. The attack killed 184 people on the airplane and in the building.
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