CEO Daniels: Historic NYC ceremony on 10th anniversary of terror attacks focuses on "remembrance"
Ten years to the day after the worst terrorist attacks in United States history, the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum will be unveiled in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2011 in a private ceremony for family members of people who died in the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and on United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa.
The 9/11 Memorial, designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker and constructed over the last six years, features two majestic waterfalls in the footprints of the Twin Towers and a peaceful plaza of trees and benches. Long bronze plinths inscribed with the names of the 2,977 victims of the 9/11 attacks, as well as the six people killed in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, line the quadrangles of the waterfalls. The adjacent 9/11 Museum, scheduled to open in September 2012, will exhibit oral histories and artifacts excavated from the wreckage of the Twin Towers, Pentagon and Flight 93 crash.
A solemn ceremony beginning at 8:30am Sunday will mark the 10th anniversary of New York’s darkest day. After the first moment of silence, family members will commence reading the names of all the victims of all 9/11 attacks at 8:46am, the minute American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower of the World Trade Center. President Barack Obama, former President George W. Bush and handful of other speakers will offer poems and eulogies for the victims, rather than speeches. According to Joe Daniels, President and CEO of the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum, the focus of the four-and-a-half-hour dedication will be on remembrance and hope rather than political posturing.
“This ceremony is for the reading of the names of the dead [from the Twin Towers], and for the first time, reading the names of those who died at the Pentagon and Flight 93. It is a symbol of this country’s obligation to never forget, and it’s a privilege for everyone who has worked on the 9/11 Memorial,” Daniels said in a press conference Sept. 8
“This dedication is all about the family members, and there’s no more special way to dedicate the memorial than for the families to hear the sound of the water falling, find the name of their loved one and place their hand on that name,” he continued.
There are several ways for people to find particular names on the bronze plaques. The 9/11 Memorial website offers a downloadable guide to the memorial’s features, and there is an app available for mobile users.
Unlike any other memorial in the country, the names inscribed in the World Trade Center footprints are arranged in adjacent order, rather than alphabetically. In planning for the memorial, officials fielded 1,200 “adjacency requests” from family members of the victims, asking that specific names appear in proximity to others to reflect the victims’ relationships. Daniels offered one example of a request from Abby Ross, whose father Richard Barry Ross perished on American Airlines Flight 11. Horrifically, Abby Ross’ best friend Stacey Leigh Sanders worked in the north tower, on the floors crushed by the impact of the Flight 11 jet. Both Richard Ross and Sanders died instantly—and on the memorial, their names are next to one another in perpetuity.
The 9/11 Memorial opens to the public on Monday, September 12. Visitors must reserve a free timed ticket on the Memorial’s website (911memorial.org). Daniels indicated that specific days over the next several months will be reserved for first responders to the 9/11 attacks and lower Manhattan residents to visit the site and commemorate their fallen neighbors.
“People will have the very special feeling of stepping on the ground that people have not seen for the past ten years,” Daniels said. “Fundamentally, the 9/11 Memorial is about those who come to remember those they lost.”
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