Giuliani, Bush Light Rockefeller Center Tree

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, November 29, 2001

Giuliani, Bush Light Rockefeller Center Tree

Still recovering from the World Trade Center attacks, New York City opened the Christmas season Wednesday with a patriotic spirit-- lighting 30,000 red, white and blue bulbs on the Rockefeller Center tree.

At 8:56 p.m., first lady Laura Bush and Mayor Rudy Giuliani jointly turned on the lights strung onto five miles of wires on the 81-foot spruce.

A crowd of about 100,000 onlookers filled the streets between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

"Tonight's tree lighting is a salute to our heroes, our traditions, and to the strength and unity of our nation," Giuliani said.

Bush wished New Yorkers a New Year "filled with peace."

The people in attendance cheered when the tree lit up after a 10-second countdown. The windows of surrounding buildings were filled with smiling faces.

Two and a half months after the Trade Center terrorist attack, this festive heart of New York City resembled an armed camp.

Hundreds of police officers guarded layers of metal pens set up to hold the crowds. Police kept passers-by from stopping to peer at the mammoth tree, yelling out, "Keep moving!"

But the security didn't dampen spirits.

The tree came from the backyard of Andrew and Kelly Tornabene in Wayne, N.J. The Queens natives had agreed to donate their tree.

The spruce, which experts say is 71 years old, would have been a young tree when the Rockefeller Center tradition began in 1931. That year, workers building the Art Deco complex placed a small unadorned evergreen on the muddy construction site.

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