NEW YORK CITY — The Olympic flame will burn in "the capital of the world" through Christmas Day after New York City rolled out the Salt Lake 2002 carpet in grand and poignant style.
The nationwide torch relay has put 3,603 miles behind it — more than a quarter of its journey to Utah — since leaving Atlanta on Dec. 4. The last few, especially the nautical miles on a ferry boat around the Statue of Liberty, were among the most touching.
"It's as if there's a leap of meaning from her flame to the Olympic flame," said Salt Lake Organizing President Mitt Romney.
A baseball star, a wheelchair-bound "Superman" and everyday do-gooders carried the Olympic flame Sunday to its resting spot at Rockefeller Center, a magical place at Christmastime where a man on bended knee was seen proposing to his girlfriend.
The nationwide relay heads to the Northeast starting Wednesday morning.
Crowds were sparse in Brooklyn — where there was grumbling about the torch relay's commercialism — but picked up on the streets of Manhattan teeming with holiday shoppers and tourists.
Fourteen people aboard the ferry who either lost someone or saved someone on Sept. 11 took part in a solemn torch-passing ceremony. Each clutched the torch while honoring World Trade Center victims and rescuers.
"John, I love you," said Stephanie Tipping, whose firefighter brother John Tipping died.
Port Authority police officer Spencer Barber, in his dress uniform, held a long salute.
"To the fallen heros," said Claudio Fernandez, a New York City motorcycle patrolman who commandeered city and private buses Sept. 11 to help some 20,000 people to safety.
The 14 misty-eyed torchbearers and their families then spontaneously sang "God Bless America." They observed a minute of silence as the ferry glided in the darkness past the glaring floodlights at ground zero.
"I'm really grateful I came to share this experience. I never expected anything like this. It was an uplift just to be here," said Joe Cerevolo, a firefighter who continues to aid families of 15 men from his firehouse who were killed. He wore his fire helmet and turnout coat over the white Olympic torchbearer outfit.
Mary Geraghty and her 14-year-old son, Connor, were the first torchbearers off the ferry. The mother-son duo jointly held the torch aloft as a tribute to husband and father Ed Geraghty, one of the first firefighters at the crippled twin towers.
"My husband was a marathon runner. He tried to get me to run for 17 years. The first time I do, I do it for him. He better be watching this and appreciating this," Mary Geraghty said.
New Yorkers seemed to appreciate the runners as the relay turned patriotically raucous once the ferry docked in Manhattan. Thousands of people lined the street to cheer on runners toting the flame. Some chanted "USA" as they passed.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani jogged the last leg across a blue "Salt Lake 2002" carpet on the Rockefeller Center ice rink adorned with 3,000 flickering candles, one for each Sept. 11 victim.
"Welcome to the capital of the world — New York City," he proclaimed to a crowd that braved rain and long delays to see the lighting of the end-of-the day cauldron. Many wore FDNY hats or sported red, white and blue lapel ribbons.
Giuliani, named Time magazine's Person of the Year on Sunday, became slightly carried away in his fervor for the 2002 Winter Games.
"It will be great for the morale of America, particularly if we win every single event," he told the crowd. New York hopes to land the 2012 Summer Olympics.
In Brooklyn, hometown boy Joe Torre started the relay off.
"At Olympic time, I get very emotional," said the 61-year-old New York Yankees manager who says he's learned to worry less about getting old and to appreciate life more after surviving prostate cancer. "You realize how insignificant age is."
Down the road at the Brooklyn Museum, actor Christopher Reeve guided his wheelchair around the block with the torch set in a metal tube.
"Even though I'm spending time in a chair, I feel as free as I've ever been," Reeve said, urging the millions of wheelchair-bound Americans to get involved in something.
Brooklynites Ron and Teresa Daignault found the torch really "pretty cool" after watching Reeve roll by.
"When it comes through your own neighborhood, it sort of personalizes it," Ron Daignault said.
While Torre and Reeve drew whoops and hollers from people who happened across them, Kathy Goldman had perhaps the largest pack of personal boosters.
Two dozen friends and family turned out to watch the grinning 69-year-old director of a community resource center walk her quarter mile.
Her friend Agnes Molnar didn't appreciate the big Coca-Cola rig rolling in ahead of the torch runners. Coke is a relay sponsor.
"It's a wonderful idea, but it's sad it's so commercial. It destroys the purpose," she said.
Molnar also was miffed SLOC didn't allow Goldman to carry signs reading "Sports not war" and "Bread not bombs."
But Goldman got her peace message out anyway. After her run, she said, "We just should have Olympics. No wars. We should just play sports."
E-MAIL: romboy@desnews.com