Video: President Barack Obama commemorates 12th anniversary of 9/11 attacks Slipped from our grasp, but it is written, 'what the heart has once owned and had, it shall never loose.' What your families lost in the temporal, the here and now, is now eternal. The pride that you carry in your hearts, the love that will never die. In New York relatives recited the names of the nearly 3,000 people who died when hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center. Beforehand, Governor Andrew Cuomo, musician Billy Joel, firefighters and others joined in a tribute motorcycle ride from a Manhattan firehouse to ground zero.