Remembering Online

Designed Out Of Desire To Help Victims And Families

(CBS)  Nik Kalyani says he understands the victims' families' feelings after the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks that left nearly 7,000 missing or dead.

His sister died in India while he was thousands of miles away and unable to attend her funeral while he was at college.

"I know the terrible sense of not having closure," said Kalyani, a Cincinnati-based entrepreneur who emigrated to the United States from Bombay in 1987.

He built www.usahomage.com to be a memorial for those who died, one of thousands of such sites that have sprung up in the past two weeks.

The sites contain art, poetry, message boards, lists of victims and patriotic slogans urging viewers never to forget the tragedy. The sites also sometimes connect viewers to charities and relief organizations, the latest news and other online memorials.

Kalyani created a site with a U.S. flag and a red rose on a black background, dedicated to "the victims and heroes of the terrorism on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001."

Kalyani was touched by the global reach of the victims, and unlike traditional granite or marble memorials, the Web sites can be reached from any of the scores of countries whose citizens were on lists of missing and dead.

"I wanted a way for people to express their grief if they could not travel to be with family and friends," he said.

Also, Kalyani had to make a point as an immigrant who has received strange looks since the attacks.

"I feel just as much love for this country as any American citizen and I wanted to show that," he said.

Kalyani's somber, cyber-memorial is among thousands of personal, evocative sites being created.

"Some of them are absolutely stunning in the way they touch you and express emotions in a real and tangible way," said Nicholas Graham, a spokesman for AOL Time Warner, the operator of the 31 million-subscriber AOL service.

"The Web is a dynamic thing and it is a reflection of the times," said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Netratings, which tracks Internet site traffic.

None of the memorial sites reached the level where they could be tracked, since there are thousands of them, he said. But overall response to the tragedy has been overwhelming.

Web sites raised more than $50 million for relief and rescue efforts in the days after the attacks.

Kalyani himself said he started the site out of frustration over not being able to do much more than give blood and money to help with the relief effort.

"I wanted to do something more tangible," he said.

Kalyani has about 2,500 of the victims names of the 6,398 missing and 279 bodies recover from the World Trade Center, 188 dead or missing from the Pentagon attack and another 44 from the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

New York freelance Web designers Christopher Olsen and Edward Prete and Christine Meyer, a bartender from Daytona Beach, said they set up sites because of their desire to help the victims.

"At first e were in shock (after the attack). I wanted to help but we weren't sure how. We donated money and we couldn't get down there to help dig people out. We figured this would be the best we're going to be able to help," Olsen said about his and Prete's Web site.

Olsen and Prete are from Long Island in the suburbs of New York City and several members of their communities were lost in the World Trade Center. Meyer grew up in Long Island and knew families and friends directly affected by this.

Meyer said inspiration for her memorial came from seeing a message board in 1996 for the people who died from TWA Flight 800 in the crash off Long Island.

Meyer made links to other memorial sites so "people will be able to move freely from one memorial page to another."

Weiner said the tragedy allowed the Internet to "flex its muscles" as a communications tool, a fundraising vehicle and a place where people could mourn.

"It allows people to feel good about themselves," Weiner said.

Other sites include Cyberangels, Legacy.com and AmericanMemorials.com.