NEW YORK - Nikki Stern spends the day outside with her sister and her dog. Kai Thompson Hernandez goes to a Hamptons beach and toasts her late husband with a Budweiser - his favorite beer.

Charles Wolf still goes to ground zero every year to mark the day his wife, Katherine, was killed when a plane smashed into the World Trade Center. But it gets more painful every year, especially when church bells mark the moment the plane hit.

“If you're down there and you hear those bells ring, it rips right through me as a family member,” Wolf said. “No one wants to relive this thing.”

The nation marked the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks Thursday with familiar rituals: There were moments of silence to mark the times hijacked planes crashed into the towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, and tearful recitations of 2,975 victims' names. President Bush spoke at the Pentagon, and presidential candidates laid flowers at ground zero.

But in an anniversary where as many people talk about moving on as never forgetting, some family members have shied away from public ceremonies and found other ways to remember.

Stern, a writer from Princeton, N.J., attended the first two anniversary ceremonies at ground zero, where her husband, James Potorti, died. “Then it wasn't necessary for me to do anymore,” she said.

She grieves privately, and when she thinks of her husband, she wants to think about what made him happy when he lived, not how he was killed.

Hernandez, whose husband, Glenn Thompson, was a Cantor Fitzgerald broker at the trade center, has never gone to the ceremony, although she turns on the television to wait to hear his name read.

“Nearly 3,000 innocents were murdered,” she said. “The names should always be read. It's the least we can do for them.”

But she finds other ways to grieve her loss that don't involve public remembrance.

Shortly after he died, she dropped wedding photographs and other mementos out of a plane in the Colorado mountains where he proposed. Every year she goes to the beach in the Hamptons where surfers who knew him held the first memorial service for him.

“I try and celebrate his life rather than mark the place of his death,” said Hernandez.

Thousands of others paid respects at the attack sites in New York, Washington and western Pennsylvania on Thursday.

At the Pentagon, 15,000 people turned out for the dedication of the first permanent memorial built at the three sites. It includes 184 benches that will glow at night, one for each victim there.

“Thanks to the brave men and women, and all those who work to keep us safe, there has not been another attack on our soil in 2,557 days,” Bush said at the dedication.

In New York, Alex, Aidan and Anna Salamone - now 13, 11 and 10 years old - wore old soccer jerseys belonging to their father, broker John Patrick Salamone, who was 37 when he was killed. They recalled playing in the yard with a toy wagon.

“He was strong. He was funny. He always made me laugh,” Alex Salamone said. “I wish I could remember more, but we were so young when he died.”

“We love you, daddy,” said Anna.