The 9/11 Memorial in New York City

                                                  The 9/11 Memorial in NYC

               There are few phrases in the American lexicon as recognizable as “ 9/11.”  The simple designation of a date and place in time evokes an entire kaleidoscope of feelings and emotions surrounding the horrendous terrorist attack and the many lives lost that day in NYC, Washington D.C and a rural field in Pennsylvania.

               Thus it was with mixed feelings of remembered dread and curious anticipation that we approached the memorial complex that sits on the foundations of the former North and South Towers of the World Trade Center.

                We had been on a walking tour, in lower Manhattan, with college friends Rick and Rene’ O’Rourke and their daughter Shannon. We had already visited the St. Paul’s church and viewed the many reminders of the emergency services personnel who had headquartered there during the recovery operation after the attack. Seemingly in temporal juxtaposition, the photos of fire fighters and police rescue teams surrounded a small wooden pew box. Within it sat a small pre-dieux and velvet-covered chair. A sign above stated that George Washington had worshipped here during the brief period when New York had been our national capitol in 1796.

              The old graveyard head stones, now scrubbed clean by the sands of time, lay out front and dated to 1700’s, the early years of NYC. The wrought iron fence surrounding the church had been featured in many photos afterwards, festooned with pictures of loved ones lost and sought after by survivors. It is hard not to feel the powerful emotions that resides here.

              From the cemetery, you can see in the near distance the rising glass and metal eminence of the new Freedom Tower, the first of the four buildings that will occupy the former world trade towers site. We were to learn later that the Chinese are to occupy twenty per cent of the tower’s offices and were unhappy with the name. It has since been changed to one World Trade Center. The memorial to 9/11 is fenced in amidst the construction site of the four buildings and the under ground museum that will open in 2014.

              The tour had arranged a 5:00 P.M. entry time for us. We were each handed a ticket for entrance. We followed the guide in to the maze of fencing. Three different security personnel checked our tickets before we even came to the airport-style security scanners. There, we removed our belts and any thing overtly metallic to get through the scanners. Then we followed a circuitous path and through a few more security checkpoints into the grass covered expanse of the 9/11 memorial.

            Our guide started to explain to us what we were seeing all around us. Two large rectangular pools of black granite, measuring about 50’ by 50’ sit on the original footprints of the North and South Towers. Each pool is surrounded with black granite and marble walls standing about four feet in height. The black marble facing atop the walls and surrounding each “pool” has the names of people killed in the attack etched into its surface. The names are grouped by where people worked together or more grimly where they were found when their remains had been recovered. The stories here are without number.

            These rectangular pools have a moving waterfall rolling down their entire interior to a floor some 30 feet below the viewing area. Then, the water flows some 20 feet laterally until it again descends another twenty feet into an interior rectangular pool. The effect is bucolic and restful, even amidst the tens of thousand of tourists who come to visit here daily.

            We stood by the black marble walls and gazed into the flowing reflective pools with water cascading down their  walls. I am not exactly sure of the symbolism that the memorial represents, but it does seem to ameliorate the remembered horror of the grounds upon which we stood and what happened here that day. So many memories of the televised events remain with all of us. Most Americans and some Europeans had some connection to one or more  of the 9/11 victims here in NYC, Washington D.C or in the fields in Western Pa. where the last plane had crashed. The unique moment of synchronicity will remain with each of us, like the day of the Kennedy assassination, as long as we live.

           The guide showed us a “survivor’s pear tree.” Some portion of the tree had survived the buildings collapse and then been grafted onto a healthy pear tree as a further memorial to those who lost their lives on that day.

           Between the pools, one-story above ground glass walled building holds several of the I-beams removed from the collapsed towers. It is the front portion of a subterranean museum featuring mementos and commemorations of the 9/11 disaster. It is scheduled to open in the summer of 2014.

            The entire complex had a curious effect on each of us. We knew and remembered intimately the calamity that had happened here, yet the reflecting pools and the town-gathering like atmosphere, of the thousands of daily visitors, much ameliorated the remembered horror of the disaster. I would think an early morning or early evening visit here would be much more contemplative and emotional. And of course visiting with or being around the relations of those lost would imbue the memorial with much more emotion. It is indeed like visiting a treasured relative’s grave site in a nearby cemetery and quietly reflecting on the life and times of the loved one lost.

              As we left the 9/11 complex, thousands were still streaming into the grounds. The site, with all of its memories, will be a premier visitor’s attraction for many years to come. We heard a swirl of different languages around us as we walked through the grounds, attesting to the international interest of the remembrance.

          Like other grand cemeteries and memorials, of the staure of the Arizona Memorial in Honolulu, the site will remind us, and those who come after, of what happened on that awful day, September 11th of 2001.

                                    -30-

                            (1018 words)

                           Joseph Xavier Martin