yeah, i guess listing them by the floor they worked on and next to the people they died with was just toooo much to ask...
Posted on 08/06/2005 5:47:16 PM PDT by Coleus
In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, Thomas Meehan remembers scouring the lists of those known dead and the lists of those who were missing for his daughter Colleen's name.
Now that New Jersey is ready to memorialize its victims of the 9/11 attack, he said he doesn't want to have to try to find his daughter again.
Meehan is among some two dozen families of 9/11 victims from New Jersey who have objected to the decision to list the names of the roughly 700 of their loved ones in random order on a memorial planned for Liberty State Park in Jersey City.
"The last thing I want to have to do is visit a memorial where I again have to search for her name," said Meehan, 62, of Carteret.
"Empty Sky," New York architect Frederic Schwartz's design for the New Jersey 9/11 memorial, was chosen from among 320 entries in a nationwide competition.
Two stainless steel walls -- symbolizing the fallen Twin Towers -- set 16 feet apart will stretch 200 feet long and rise 30 feet high, forming a visual corridor focusing on the void where the World Trade Center once stood across the Hudson River. The name of each New Jersey resident who died will be engraved in nearly 4-inch-high lettering on the walls.
In announcing the design last year, Schwartz said he chose to engrave the names randomly, rather than alphabetically or by any other category, such as by employer or civilian versus uniformed personnel.
.........
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Are there any long term memorial or site plans for the WTC site or nearby that aren't ilconceived?
It seems to me that special interests have taken over, and it's a screw what the families think, "I know what's best" mentality has taken over.
This is yet another disgusting non-repsonsive thumb in your eye act aimed squarely at the families. Any such concerns should have their permits revoked, unless it can be proven that the families are being unreasonable.
It is not unreasonable for the families to try to avoid the same problem they had finding their family member's name on a very important list, when visiting this memorial. It seems most cruel to ignore this.
That's right. Noboby else died but your daughter. Who wants to read those other people's stupid names.
Sheesh.
"It was a random act," explained Aileen Ryan Burden, whose 45-year-old brother, John J. Ryan Jr., was killed on 9/11. "We just thought it was the fairest way to do it. We wanted everybody to be treated equally, with no hierarchy or title."
How stupid. Stupid or dishonest.
How bad off are we when the people planning a memorial feel infinite compassion toward the attackers and none toward the victims and their families (those who are unsophisticated enough to miss the grand point, I mean)?
I think it would be more politically correct if we just put an "x" representing each person. You know if some people have longer names then that is not fair. /sarc
yeah, i guess listing them by the floor they worked on and next to the people they died with was just toooo much to ask...
Today it is one of the most visited memorials in the US. It is amazing how a few years can change our perspective, and how too often we can be too close to see the bigger picture.
Kill A Commie For Mommie
Seven Dead Monkeys Page O Tunes
LOL. Very good.
These names are listed in order of the date of death. I never understood that before, and I thought it cruel to make it harder for people to find their loved ones.
Now I understand why. Two reasons. The first one was made clear to me when I recently visited the traveling wall in Fresno, and a veteran pointed out to me the half dozen men from his helicopter crew, all of whom were killed in a crash. Their names were listed together, because they all died together.
The 2nd reason is so that people get involved in the search. All you have to do is go to the reference and look up the name alphabetically, then go to the correct panel and line number, and presto, there's the name. But it makes you become involved. An alphabetic list would tend to cause someone to go...look...and walk away without becoming part of the "process" of the memorial. I remember the times I have greived for the loss of someone, and I ended up appreciating when the flow of events were setup in such a way to make me step out of my own thoughts and participate in a process in which everyone else is participating. Even if it's just simply the act of first having to look on an alphabetical list to show me where to go to find the person I'm looking for.
I guess I'm saying here that I like the idea of not listing the names alphabetically. I'm not sure that random is better than some other order that could be derived, such as the floor they worked on, or something else, but I think that at least random is better than pure alphabetical. I'd have to really think about it for a while to determine if I'd like something else better.
"It was a random act," explained Aileen Ryan Burden, whose 45-year-old brother, John J. Ryan Jr., was killed on 9/11. "We just thought it was the fairest way to do it. We wanted everybody to be treated equally, with no hierarchy or title."
And you know, some people have ethnic names too. So we decided to rename everyone Sandy* Jones.
*Unisex name.
OK, that makes sense. But then again, most died on the same day at the same time. don't know any easy solution, it's become very PC.
It's really a shame that these victim's families have to deal with this. When the Vietnam Memorial was created there had been more time for the pain to soften since the war, though honestly I don't recall at all if there was much ado about how to order the names. Now these WTC attack families are having to deal with this right in the middle of a war that was largely a direct result of the attacks. It's just tragic in every respect.
I guess that if they wanted to list the names by the floor and office number that they worked in that would be OK with me. So that just as with that helicopter crewman that I met at the VN Memorial who lost his whole crew, where he was able to see their names all in a row, someone who lost their co-workers at the WTC could see them all together on the wall.
I guess that no matter which way it goes, there's going to be lots of hand wringing about it. God Bless those people. I wish them peace and justice!
List them all or none of them.
You are correct .... and it's not in alphabetical order either.
What is it with this sudden compulsion to list the names of the victims on a memorial? I don't recall any monument before the Vietnam Memorial listing names. Have we become a nation of number freaks? "My memorial is better than your memorial because it has more names."
Let's just build a memorial that tells of whatever tragic event occured, perhaps mention the number of people who lost their lives, and leave it at that.
i know, this thing with listing names is getting a bit out of hand.
Oh, my. I can hardly believe what I'm reading. Random act? All the planning and financing the terrorists undertook and the choice of targets and it's random?? And these are victims families feeling sorry for the criminals responsible. It was anything but random. Yikes. What a travesty. They are hardly 'honoring' the victims with this.
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