NEW YORK - The first people in eight years to climb the narrow inner spiral up to the Statue of Liberty’s crown were seven US immigrant soldiers who became US citizens under sparkling skies Saturday morning on the US Independence Day.
Lady Liberty, which has greeted millions of immigrants to the US as they entered New York Harbour, welcomed visitors again following years of closure after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
“The idea of freedom is why I moved to this country, and this moment means more than I can ever describe with words,” Sameh Zaki, 26, a native of Egypt and US soldier, told New York’s Daily News.
The re-opening coincides with the celebration of the Independence Day, which marks the adoption of the US declaration of independence from Britain in 1776.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was on hand for the swearing-in ceremony of hundreds of new US citizens on Liberty Island - a ceremony repeated around the country and even in as far flung places as Iraq, where active duty military members of the US military from different countries were sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden.
Access to Liberty Island and the inside of the Statue of Liberty was totally prohibited after the Sep 11, 2001 attacks due to security concerns. US national park officials have gradually allowed more access, first to the island and later to the lower storeys of the statue.
But the climb up through Liberty’s robe and into the crown has been banned for visitors until its reopening Saturday, when a select 280 people were, over the course of the day, to be allowed to climb the 354 stairs - 22 storeys - up the narrow spiral staircase.
Only 30 people every hour were to be admitted for security reasons. Tickets, which were offered online in mid-June, have been sold out until next winter.
Among the first climbers was Aaron Weifinger, who along with his fiancee grinned as he told CNN how he had proposed to her at the top of the crown. They wore matching green foam-rubber Liberty crowns that are popular with New York tourists.
“My great grandparents immigrated through Ellis Island” from Russia and Hungary, Weifinger told CNN.
To accommodate public interest in the statue, the park service will be offering an e-tour, and coverage on the social networks Twitter and Flickr.
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July 4th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Secretary Salazar Presides Over Renewal of Statue of Liberty and Death in the West; While an American Symbol of Hope is Renewed, A Living Symbol of the American West is Extinguished.
On this 4th of July, Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar officially reopens to the public the Statue of Liberty’s crown, a powerful symbol to the nation and the world of American ideals and hopes. Meanwhile, in the American West, his Bureau of Land Management is detailing plans for the extermination of a different but equally powerful symbol of the American spirit, the wild horse. While Secretary Salazar is “inviting the public to celebrate our great nation and the hope and opportunity it symbolizes”, 33,000 wild horses are in holding pens, removed from Federal designated Wild Horse Territories, awaiting the completion of BLM plans to send them to a mass slaughter, without the proper consideration of viable and humane alternatives.
Information obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by the Conquistador Group in Arizona has found that as Secretary Salazar stands before the Statue of Liberty in his white cowboy hat and speaks of the great American experience, he is also presiding over the formal plans to kill 33,000 wild horses, provide stress counseling for the BLM workers who carry out his orders as well as shielding them from Congressional scrutiny and labeling anyone who tries to view, expose or stop the executions as “eco-terrorists”. A quite different American experience than today’s pose for the papers.
Will the mass killing of 33,000 wild horses, a living symbol that embodies the free spirit of the American West, be one of the great legacies of Secretary Salazar and the Obama Administration?