Names Will Be Grouped At WTC Memorial
By CBS News producer Phil Hirschkorn
The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation on Wednesday ratified a plan to list victims of the attack in meaningful groups, putting to rest a debate as long as the desire to build a September 11 memorial.
The future memorial, featuring two sunken reflecting pools where the 110-story Twin Towers once stood, will list names of colleagues, relatives and emergency responders together in 10 groups.
Engraved around the north pool will be the largest group — the names of the 1,431 people who were working or visiting the North Tower that day, as well as the 87 passengers and crew aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first of four al Qaeda-hijacked jets to crash on Sept. 11, 2001. The largest group lost in the North Tower were 658 people in the offices of brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald, who trapped on the top floors above where the plane hit.
The other eight groupings will be posted around the South Tower pool, including more than 400 firefighters and police who perished on the scene.
When architect Michael Arad won the memorial competition three years ago, he had conceived the victims' names being listed randomly, reflecting the randomness in which people died in the 2001 attacks. But that sparked an outcry among some family groups, and especially the fire and police departments. Emergency responders will now be grouped together by command, precinct or company.
"I think it is right and appropriate that those uniformed personnel who heroically took part in the greatest rescue operation in our country's history will be listed with their companies, their brothers — with whom they bravely served side by side each day," said outgoing New York Gov. George Pataki, who has overseen the Trade Center rebuilding effort.
The south pool will list more than 700 victims who were working or visiting the South Tower as well as the 60 passengers and crew aboard United Flight 175, which crashed 16 minutes after the first plane, and victims whose specific location when they died is not known.
The memorial will also honor the victims of the other crash sites — the 50 passengers and crew who died aboard American Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon; the 125 military personnel and civilians killed inside the Pentagon, and 40 passengers and crew who died on United Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pa., after their uprising thwarted hijackers' plans to crash the plane in Washington, presumably into the Capitol.
The new memorial will also remember six people killed in the Feb. 26, 1993, truck bombing of a Trade Center garage. A marble fountain in their honor, which sat on the trade center plaza, was destroyed on Sept. 11.
"I believe the solution we present today strikes the right balance and although I don't expect everyone to be happy with it, I can assure everyone that their views were heard as we struggled with this question," said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who now chairs the memorial foundation.
The foundation has raised $202 million toward its $300 million goal, with more than 28,000 contributions from all 50 states and 18 foreign countries.
A jury picked Arad's design from more than 5,000 entrants. The reflecting pools will be surrounded by a plaza of oak trees.
The memorial, museum, and visitors center, will occupy half of the 16-acre site. The tallest building in North America, the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, will rise next to it. Groundbreaking for both projects got under way this summer. The memorial is due to be completed first, in 2009.
By Phil Hirschkorn