It was late afternoon on a gray, foreboding day in New York City on Sept. 10, 2001, and former Skyline editor Beth Burmahl was on a weekend getaway. It was her first trip to the Big Apple.

Before catching an evening flight home, Burmahl and her traveling buddy decided to take a late afternoon ferry to Ellis Island, a ride that offers a spectacular view of Manhattan from the water.

“It was a gray, cloudy, really gloomy day,” recalled Burmahl. “I turned around and took a few snapshots of the [World Trade Center] towers. They were imposing, powerful, and I imagined thousands and thousands of people inside each one.

“When I first looked at the towers, I thought they were beautiful and stirring, breathtaking,” said Burmahl. “Like any person who first views the New York skyline from the ferry, it’s stunning, gorgeous, and the twin towers were the main anchor.”

Little did Burmahl know then that her pictures would become some of the last of the twin towers intact. The following morning, from home, she watched on TV as the buildings were attacked, and then disappeared.

“I was dumbfounded,” said Burmahl, who I spent Sept. 11, 2001 working with, in the then-Lincolnwood-based Skyline office. “I had just been in that beautiful city and saw the towers the day before. It was mind-blowing to see the whole thing crumble.”

Burmahl’s chum, Heather Groh, had left home in Lincoln Park to meet Burmahl in New York and visit some friends there before catching a Sept. 11 flight to Casablanca, Morocco. While Burmahl headed home, Groh spent the night at a crony’s in Queens, where she was awakened by a neighbor the following morning.

“It was just so unbelievable,” remembered Groh, who eventually made it home on a Greyhound bus. “It’s weird how the world stopped. There was mass chaos everywhere.

“I remember seeing the skyline of Chicago and I just wanted to get out and kiss the ground,” she said. “It’s a very sad life-changing, world-changing experience. I don’t think anybody will ever be the same.”

Although both women have tales to tell future generations, neither will do anything particularly special to commemorate Sunday’s 10th anniversary of that life- and world-changing day. But for those of you wanting to get out for some comfort or peace, I suggest attending the 9/11 service 7 p.m. at the Fourth Presbyterian Church, 126 E. Chestnut St.

Hosted by Fourth Presbyterian, Chicago Sinai Congregation, the Downtown Islamic Center and Holy Name Cathedral, the evening should be “soulful,” said Joyce Shin, associate pastor for congregational life at Fourth Presbyterian.

“We want the service to be a meaningful event for the whole city,” said Shin. “It is going to be commemorative in tone, but also one that inspires collective action for the common good as well as a sense of hope for the future.”

The evening will feature prayer and refl­ections by leaders from each faith community. It will also be composer Aaron David Miller’s world premiere of “Voices of Peace,” specially commissioned for the service and sung by a 95-member choir.

The music is “especially beautiful,” and the hope is that the night will be uplifting and bring people together, said Rabbi Michael Sternfield of Chicago Sinai Congregation.

“It’s a service of remembrance and hope,” said Sternfield. “I think for all of us, 9/11 continues to be a searing memory, and we have a deep felt need to express our emotion and sense of loss. We want the event to look beyond tragedy and make something constructive out of it, to find some redeeming quality we can embrace beyond the sense of tragic.”