SAD TOUR: PM David Cameron and wife Samantha are joined by Mayor Bloomberg and 9/11 relative Charles Wolf at the memorial yesterday. (Getty Images)
British Prime Minister David Cameron — who had spent five fretful hours trying to reach his then-pregnant wife in New York City on 9/11 — visited the World Trade Center memorial yesterday with Mayor Bloomberg.
Joining them and Mrs. Cameron was Charles Wolf, whose Welsh-born wife, Katherine, was among the 2,753 innocents who perished in the terrorist attacks. Sixty-seven British nationals were among the victims.
The Camerons placed a bouquet of white roses on one of the bronze parapets that surround the pools of remembrance and bear the names of the dead.
Katherine Wolf had started working at Marsh & McLennan in the north tower just three weeks before she was killed.
“It was very, very nice for both he and his wife to come,” Charles Wolf said of the British leader. “It was very personal as well as being official.”
Before visiting the memorial, the Camerons toured the unfinished 1 WTC and took in the view from the 21st floor.
Cameron told an interviewer two years ago that his wife, Samantha, was two months’ pregnant and in the city on 9/11. He kept dialing her cellphone after the Twin Towers fell, but it took five hours before he could reach her and learn she was fine.
Earlier yesterday, he stopped in Newark, where he met with Mayor Cory Booker, a Rhodes scholar who got a degree from Oxford in 1994. Booker gave Cameron a tour of businesses helped by local economic aid.
Cameron called the WTC memorial a reminder of the special relationship between the United States and Britain.
“What’s been really helpful is to talk through Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia — the problems in our world that make us less safe at home,” he told Sky News.
“And here is the place to remember — 9/11, where an act of terrorism, an act of brutality, killed almost 3,000 people, including 67 British nationals. It shows why this relationship is so important.”