Put It Above Ground

Memorial names & truth

To The Editor:

I agree with much of your conclusions in your editorial “Let 9/11 families take the lead on name listings� (July 14 – 20). I appreciate the concern expressed of the families regarding the listings; the memorial jury, many in the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg have been oblivious to their repeated and reasonably expressed arguments.
However, I do not agree entirely with your reasoning why the names should be listed in a manner authentic to the facts of the day. I mean, that’s the point. To list them by company, tower, floor, or by flight and to identify them as a firefighter or police or court officer and provide their rank and company is the truth. To list family members who died together, together, is the truth. To do otherwise is to impose a meaning of our choice upon the site.  
The first stakeholder at ground zero is not the 9/11 families nor the Downtown residents nor businesses or anybody else. The first stakeholder is the truth. You say the memorial “shouldn’t tell the entire story of 9/11� — well, nor should it ignore it for the sake of, as the memorial jurors have said, “what we need and deserve.�
As I write this, an email was sent to me of an Associated Press story detailing a very credible plot to attack the slurry wall and flood Downtown New York. Preserving bedrock and boxbeams was never a good idea and fell into the category of “what we need and deserve� at the expense of faithfully conveying 9/11.
The solution is simple: Restore a representative piece of the façade and the Sphere, list the names without our editing (and as the public already embraced through the flyers); honor the rescue workers as they deserve (as the public has also already embraced) and build a humble and attractive 9/11 museum, plaza level, housing the flyers, crushed fire trucks and telling “the story� of 9/11, with an atrium overlooking the site. That’s easily secured and accessible to all the shops, etc of Downtown which would be a great boon to their business. Add trees, benches, other artwork, whatever. There’s your memorial.
 
Michael Burke
Brother of F.D.N.Y. Capt. William F. Burke, Jr., Eng. 21, killed Sept. 11, 2001.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 7:52 am and is filed under Letters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.