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A block away from the World Trade Center site, even Century 21 has its own version of a 9/11 memorial ceremony.

The store, which opens at 7:45 a.m., silenced the piped-in muzak at 8:46 and 9:03 a.m. to mark the times the planes slammed into the nearby Twin Towers.

Following the attacks, the discount designer department store was closed until Feb. 2002 but has been thriving since it re-opened, said Iris Rodriguez, a supervisor on the third floor women's department. "The first day back was really busy. They missed us," she said of the store's reopening.

Rodriguez, 54, has worked at Century 21 for 10 years and was there the day of the terrorist attacks but didn't see or hear anything until a customer who had just arrived by bus broke the news to the department store staff.

"I looked out the window and saw flames and papers falling everywhere," she said.

Seven years later, Rodriguez has never attended the nearby memorial ceremony."I feel like it's not my place because I was lucky," she said.