Delegates pay emotional visit to 9/11 attack site
W. Virginia Republican: 'We can't let it happen again'
From Richard Shumate
CNN
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Viewing the vast empty canyon that was once the site of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, Karen McCoy of Droop Mountain, West Virginia, said, "I had to back away."
For Joyce Fernando of Wilmington, North Carolina, seeing the site for the first time was "just overwhelming."
"Those huge buildings are just like dust. Gone," she said.
For Cleve Benedict of Lewisburg, West Virginia, it reinforced his belief that keeping President Bush in the White House is vital for the nation's security.
"The world is a dangerous place. It is indeed a war. We can't let it happen again," said Benedict, standing on a plaza overlooking the epicenter of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. "I don't sense that the other guys see it that way."
Silvia Darrow, co-chairwoman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Montgomery County, Maryland, when asked whether seeing the attack site reinforces her resolve to work for the president's re-election, she said, "Absolutely. But I had that resolve before I came here."
Her initial reaction to seeing the remnants of the World Trade Center? "Tears," she said. "I knew it would just be a big flat nothing space there."
Sensitive to the potential backlash that could result from mingling the terrorist attacks with partisan politics, Republican National Convention planners decided against any organized effort to take their delegates, alternates or convention guests to the site.
But three years after the terrorist attacks, the GOP faithful have been going to Lower Manhattan on their own, in small groups, to see the site where the towers fell.
"It reminds us that this war on terrorism is something that we didn't choose," said John Schronce of Southport, North Carolina. "This is not a war that Mr. Bush wanted. ... We must protect ourselves."
Wednesday afternoon, the West Virginia delegation came to Lower Manhattan to view the scene from a nearby office tower, and met a firefighter who was working at the site on September 11 and a fire captain who lost his son that day.
"When you listen to them tell their stories, you can tell they're still in pain," said McCoy, who is attending her first GOP convention. "They are still in mourning. The whole country's still in mourning."
McCoy, a convention alternate, said she wanted to do three things while in New York: Be on the convention floor during a major speech, go to Wall Street and go to the trade center site. She said the trip allowed her to come to grips with the enormity of what happened.
RNC protesters, too, have been coming to the site, which was the scene of more than 200 arrests Tuesday.
Only a few dozen protesters were on the scene Wednesday.
Darrow, wearing a Bush-Cheney T-shirt while she walked among the demonstrators, talked with one man who asked her how she felt about U.S. forces bombing Iraqi mosques.
"I've pointed out that we've been very careful to avoid damage," she said.
Her abiding message is one not likely to assuage the demonstrators' grievances: to let Bush continue waging the war on terror by re-electing him.
"Transition would be tough at this time," she said.
