Memorial News 5


	He's heaven's little 'fireman' Boy, 5, dies of cancer after he lost dad in blaze By ALICE McQUILLAN DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU "Heaven must have its youngest firefighter." That was the heartbreaking epitaph yesterday for 5-year-old Michael Downing, who lost his brave battle with cancer this week - two years after losing his hero firefighter dad in the 2001 Father's Day blaze in Queens. "This is so unfair," said Firefighter Bob O'Neill, a family friend. Michael, whose short life was filled with more tragedy than any child should ever have to bear, first complained of pain during a plaque dedication at his dad's firehouse a year after the fire that killed three Bravest. He was soon diagnosed with neuroblastoma and died Monday at his family's Long Island home following months of painful treatments. The morning after her brother died, Joanne Downing, 9, got out of bed and wrote him a letter. The little girl had gone through the same grim, but life-affirming ritual when her father died on the day everyone celebrates their dads. "Michael: Amazing, tough, sweet, cute, cool, friendly. My brother. Love, Joanne," she wrote, slipping the note yesterday into his casket. Hundreds of grief-stricken mourners filed past that casket yesterday at a Woodside, Queens, funeral home as they tried to comfort Anne Downing, who has been left to cope with the premature loss of her husband and her only son. "No words can express the depths of sorrow and pain this family has endured," said Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. "Through it all, Anne and her family have been incredibly heroic. The entire Fire Department is awed and inspired by her." Friends said Anne Downing remained strong during all the hospital trips, and spent every moment possible with Michael while trying also to support Joanne - her partner in the crushing double loss. An immigrant from Kilkeel in County Down, Ireland, Anne Downing has been drawing strength from her large family and Catholic faith, as well as her extended family of firefighters and cops, friend say. "He was a young boy, had his life cut short but the family has a strong religious background and is keeping the faith," said O'Neill of Ladder Co. 163, Downing's firehouse in Woodside. "Heaven must have its youngest firefighter." Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, who was among Michael's many hospital visitors, will sing at the boy's funeral tomorrow morning. Hundreds of firefighters and police officers have donated blood in Michael's name to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he underwent countless transfusions and operations. Neuroblastoma, typically a childhood cancer, attacks the nervous system. With Michael, the cancer began in his spine, spread to his liver, lungs, brain and settled in the bones of his legs and feet. He was just 3 when he was diagnosed a year after his 40-year-old father and two other firefighters died in a five-alarm blaze and explosion at a hardware store that was improperly storing propane tanks and paint. Downing and Rescue 4 Firefighter Harry Ford, 50, died when the store's roof crashed around them. Firefighter Brian Fahey, 46, died after being trapped in the basement. The Downing family has asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to: The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Neuroblastoma Cancer Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, MSKCC, 1275 York Ave., New York, NY 10021, and The New York City Firefighters Burn Center Foundation, 21 Asch Loop, The Bronx, NY 10475. Tomorrow's funeral Mass will begin at 10:30 a.m. at St. Sebastian's Church, at 58th St. and Roosevelt Ave. in Woodside. Originally published on October 23, 2003 DAILY NEWS ================================================================================== In grief, strength A 'mom dealt the toughest hand' By ALICE McQUILLAN DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU Police officers and firefighters talk outside funeral home during wake for Michael Downing. As she stood near her 5-year-old son's coffin in a Queens funeral home yesterday, Anne Downing held the hands of mourners, giving them as much comfort as they tried to give her. "I wish," she said sadly, "we had found the cure." Hundreds of mourners who paid their respects found themselves filled with overwhelming sadness for Michael, who lost his valiant 16-month battle with cancer on Monday. But they also marveled at how Anne has handled her double loss. Two years ago, her husband, John, died with two other firefighters in a horrible Father's Day blaze. "Anne is an amazing woman. She has an inner strength and power that's unbelievable," said Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, who will sing at Michael's funeral Mass today at St. Sebastian's Church in Woodside. "If ever a woman got dealt the toughest hand in life, that woman did," Tynan added. "And she would never lean on anybody or ask anything. She's an example ... in the manner in which she has carried her cross." Signs of her loss filled the room at the Kennedy Roth Funeral home, decorated with pictures of her son. There's Michael, smiling at his 5th birthday party in August. There's Michael, poking just his face out of a foamy bubble bath. There's Michael, looking delighted to be at Disney World. He never got to finish kindergarten or wear his Batman costume on Halloween. Instead, friends took him trick-or-treating recently, knowing he would not last until the holiday. His uncle Frank McCullagh said the Long Island boy was a fighter, feisty until the end, full of opinions about his favorite TV shows or the best place to buy the fruit ices he liked. McCullagh praised the unending support from firefighters and cops, who gave the boy their blood for transfusions and their time to cheer him up. During one of Michael's many hospitalizations at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a fire truck pulled up outside the boy's room. They stretched the ladder to Michael's fifth-floor room and pasted a get-well card to the window. Yesterday, an honor guard of police officers stood outside the Woodside funeral parlor while hundreds of cops and firefighters streamed inside. Two of John Downing's brothers, James and Joseph, are cops, and a third, Denis, is a firefighter. Friends and relatives worry that Anne Downing has not had enough time to mourn her husband and now has to cope with her son's death while taking care of her 9-year-old daughter, Joanne. "The batteries are running out," Downing conceded, managing a polite smile. "It's been rough." She said she hoped news about Michael's battle against neuroblastoma might inspire others to donate money for research and blood for transfusions. "Poor Anne," said Tynan. "She's lost her husband and here we go again. What do you say, except 'We love you and are there for you'?" Originally published on October 24, 2003

		Council Dems Press Gov. on WTC Memorial By Dan Janison Staff Writer NY1 July 23, 2003, 6:10 PM EDT Democrats in the City Council sought Wednesday to increase pressure on Gov. George Pataki to create a separate memorial for emergency officers who died responding to the World Trade Center attack. A non-binding resolution calls on the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to recognize each uniformed rescue worker killed Sept. 11, 2001, with agency, rank, badge number and unit. "So far the powers that be have turned us down," said Councilman G. Oliver Koppell (D-Bronx), who's co-sponsoring the resolution with Councilman Tony Avella (D-Queens) "While the World Trade Center memorial will honor all victims of the 9/11 attack," Koppell said, "it is fitting" that those who rescued thousands of others be honored in an "appropriate" way. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other leaders have supported the "Fallen Heroes Memorial" promoted by Fire Department Lt. John Finucane, chairman of an ad hoc group advocating the project. "Every soul that perished that day is equally precious," Finucane said on City Hall steps. "We just want to make sure these brave men and women are never forgotten. ... Please put pressure on the governor to come to his senses." But Lower Manhattan Development Corp. spokeswoman Joanna Rose replied that it's the work of an independent jury selected for memorial purposes. "Neither the governor, the mayor or the LMDC will select the 9/11 memorial design," she said, "because we respect the integrity of the independent jury which has been entrusted with this important reponsibility. "We hope the City Council will also respect the integrity of the process," Rose said. NY TIMES Ground Zero Developments Ever since 9/11 this page has urged that the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site be conducted in the public eye whenever possible. What has happened in the past few months is a reminder that openness is absolutely vital. It has gradually become clear that the developer of the first stages of this project will be Larry Silverstein, who headed a group that bought the lease on the twin towers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey weeks before they fell. Some of the central figures in the redevelopment process had airily predicted he would be long gone by now, bought off for a portion of the insurance money by the powers that be. But Mr. Silverstein has started to look like the real stayer. Although there's been no official announcement, he appears to have been designated as the man who will bring to life the conceptual vision of the architect Daniel Libeskind, whose design for ground zero was chosen at the end of a very public process. Mr. Silverstein vows to rebuild the site swiftly and "superbly." But his idea of superb may not always coincide with the public's or with Mr. Libeskind's. He is currently erecting a new building on the edge of the trade center site, and the neighborhood has been unhappy with the narrow way he wants to carry out agreed-upon designs there. The public does not have an adequate way of seeing and assessing his proposed changes to the Libeskind concept since much of the planning process is taking place in private. Mr. Libeskind's original plan, which was executed rapidly for a competition, was inevitably going to be changed before it could be carried out on this complex site. But we worry that the entire vision is in danger of being hijacked, "refined" into something that falls far short of its original promise. Mr. Silverstein talks publicly about how his buildings at ground zero will "reflect" Mr. Libeskind's ideas, but he seems to be contemplating major changes, including moving Mr. Libeskind's 1,776-foot tower — a shift that could undermine its impact on New York's skyline. Mr. Silverstein also claims he has an obligation to restore at least 10 million square feet of office space to the site, which he proposes doing by 2012. One version of Mr. Libeskind's plan did make room for that much office space — eventually. But Mr. Silverstein's urgency threatens to create too much, too soon, and crowd out the chance to make Lower Manhattan a vibrant, attractive residential community as well as a center of business and tourism. Lower Manhattan needs a developer, and Mr. Silverstein may be the most logical choice. Thanks to insurance proceeds, he already has $1.3 billion and he could receive between $3.5 billion and $7 billion more. Gov. George Pataki wants work to begin as soon as possible, and Mr. Silverstein already has the resources to make that happen — as well as the legal muscle to slow down anyone else trying to replace him. But this cannot ever be treated as a normal real estate development, in which Mr. Silverstein would be expected to maximize return on every dollar of investment. The 16-acre site is owned by the Port Authority and the billions in insurance proceeds are compensation for the destruction of public property. On Sept. 11 that public property also became, in a very different sense, a public trust, a place consecrated in our memories and imaginations. Mr. Silverstein's rights under his lease — a document that should be made readily available to the public — cannot prevail over the public's interest in this land. Mr. Silverstein speaks passionately about his mission to rebuild the trade center site, and the last thing he would want is to give the impression that he, his firm or his heirs might make an obscene profit as a result of this tragedy. Besides Mr. Silverstein, the man who has emerged as the key figure in the redevelopment is Governor Pataki, who controls the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and — along with the governor of New Jersey — the Port Authority. Mr. Pataki has to make sure that Mr. Silverstein's plans are in accord with the public expectation of what ground zero should look like. But he can't do it alone. He must make certain that the people are kept abreast of what is going on. The more open and transparent this process, the more likely it is that what emerges at ground zero is a vision as close as possible to Mr. Libeskind's plan and to the aspirations of us all. FRANK RICH New York Times Ground Zero or Bust How brief is the shelf life of elephant dung in the culture wars. It was only a shade less than four years ago that New York flew into a frenzy over Rudolph Giuliani's short-lived effort to shut down the Brooklyn Museum of Art for exhibiting Chris Ofili's dung-ornamented painting "The Holy Virgin Mary." Last week dung returned for an encore, ceremonially clumped on a portrait of the former mayor himself that appears in a new show at the Whitney Museum. The Daily News reflexively slapped the picture, by the Shanghai-born artist Zhou Tiehai, on Page 1 ("New Rudy Art Flap"), the local television newscasters duly cluck-clucked . . . and no one cared. Even Mr. Giuliani didn't rise to the bait. "Well, I'm really not an art critic," he said. "If it was an opera, I'd be able to comment on it." Mr. Giuliani's reaction confirms the passing of an era. In post-9/11 New York, it's not those tired 20th-century battles about pornography and blasphemy that draw blood. The new culture wars often spring from 9/11 itself, starting with the future, aesthetic and otherwise, of ground zero. Were Mr. Giuliani to take in the rest of the Whitney exhibit, he might yet be moved to take up art criticism again. Its more incendiary works rise above dung, in provocation if not always in merit, to meet the terrorists' attack and its aftermath head-on. The show, called "The American Effect," is a roundup of how artists around the world have viewed the United States since 1990. It may be no surprise that George W. Bush as well as Karl Rove's favorite Bush antecedent, William McKinley, are evoked as imperialistic icons. But even the works that predate 9/11 can bleed into the here and now. The Japanese artist Makoto Aida's 1996 "Picture of an Air Raid on New York City (War Picture Returns)" is an epic view of Midtown Manhattan in which attacking planes have engulfed the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, among others, in hellish flames. The picture is jolting in the context of this moment and this show. Though the artist's intention may have been to trigger the shopworn "why do they hate America" question, the work instead ambushes 2003 American viewers with a graphic representation of our worst nightmares of vulnerability. We're desperate to suppress those recurrent dreams. We crave that panacea for all that ails Americans, closure. We want to wrap up the fate of ground zero. We want to move on. And therein lies the leading front of the culture war: can architecture, commerce and artistic entrepreneurship (a new City Opera? a Museum of Freedom sponsored by American Express?) so quickly bind the gravest wound in New York's modern memory? Officially, we keep being told, the answer is yes. We're back to business as usual. Daniel Libeskind, having won the culture war's first official battle, is already flaunting his enhanced celebrity by posing for Audi car ads that boast he has been "awarded the commission of the century, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site." But the rebuilding hasn't started in earnest yet, and no one knows how faithful the final results will be to the Libeskind grand plan or which of the competing political and commercial powers will call those shots. The selection of a design for the memorial, to be announced by Maya Lin and 12 other jurors in the fall, could also upstage or upend Mr. Libeskind's 1,776-foot-high Freedom Tower. So could fights among the warring constituencies, from the families of uniformed and civilian victims to Lower Manhattan's residents. And looming over the entire drama is the political showmanship mandated by the 2004 Republican National Convention. Will George Pataki and Roland Betts, a director of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation who happens to be a best friend of W, allow the president to begin his re-election campaign against the backdrop of a flat-lined ground zero? I can safely predict the answer to that last question, at least: No. But whatever is being erected on the World Trade Center site then, it's preposterous to think that 9/11 will be a settled matter in the hearts and minds of those who lived through it. It was nearly a decade after the Vietnam War before Ms. Lin's design could tap into a unconscious consensus of how we might remember that tragedy. In the less than two years since 9/11, we are still swinging erratically through the Kubler-Ross playbook. After the attack, anger fought denial to a standoff: No one protested when Hollywood simply edited the twin towers out of movies and television shows. Now we're just as breathlessly signing on to more towers, as if we could turn back to the future on a dime. It's a measure of how raw 9/11 wounds still are that a movie called "September 11," shown at the Toronto and Venice film festivals last September, is only now opening, this Friday in New York and eventually around the country. The film is a coincidental complement to the Whitney exhibit: a compilation of 11 shorts in which mostly foreign filmmakers react to the attack. The project was assembled by a French television producer, Alain Brigand, and was criticized as anti-American when first screened beyond our borders. In the end, only a small New York distributor, Empire Pictures, would take it on for domestic distribution. The movie is not anti-American unless you believe that the film's British contributor, Ken Loach, should be censored for bringing up the American role in another cataclysm that happened to occur on another Sept. 11 (in 1973), the coup overthrowing President Salvador Allende in Chile. The French contribution, by Claude Lelouch, is not anti-American, merely self-parodistically French to the point of resembling an old Nichols-and-May sketch: the attack on New York is seen as merely a grim interruption in a love affair. The American contributor, the normally ideological Sean Penn, opts for apolitical bathos, a "Twilight Zone"-style tale with Ernest Borgnine as a grieving widower (but without Rod Serling's wit). The segments that make the movie valuable have less to do with politics or maudlin re-enactments of 9/11 anecdotes than with forcing us to look at the entire event afresh. That's more of a challenge than it sounds like. The collective efforts of the media, architects and politicians to freeze that day in aspic — to codify its meaning and cauterize its horror — have the effect of anesthesia. Even the once-searing video bites can lose their power. It takes an artist who can cut through the overly processed iconography of 9/11 to take us back to that morning. This is what happens in the "September 11" segment by the Mexican director of "Amores Perros," Alejandro González Iñárritu. As he explains in the film's production notes, he hoped to take "one step back" from the images that have been "exposed a thousand times to everybody." He wanted to avoid both "political gibberish and rhetoric" and the news media's habit of "selling the event with characters and heroes." Mr. Iñárritu does use video of the attack — bodies tumbling from the twin towers — and he does use its sounds, a collage of breaking-news radio bulletins, of confused voices of panic on the street and ultimately of structural steel ripping apart in a grinding, apocalyptic roar. But the images are presented through figuratively squinted eyes, as almost subliminal flashes against a black void. The sounds, which are similarly chaotic, rekindle memories of a day that inflicted a visceral, inchoate terror before it could be assigned any kind of rational shape, let alone meaning, by its witnesses. In his way, Mr. Iñárritu, who also layers in some music by the Kronos Quartet (among others), recalls the tack taken by the American composer John Adams, who used a documentary soundscape in "On the Transmigration of Souls," the 9/11 piece that the New York Philharmonic commissioned for performance last fall. Unlike Mr. Adams, Mr. Iñárritu can't resist adding a moral at the end (about the wages of religious fundamentalism), but that postscript cannot undo the power of what has come before. His film tosses us back to the fear and rage and grief. When you emerge from it, it's not so easy to return to a sanitized remembrance of that day. As the most forceful parts of "September 11" remind you, the war on terrorism is not over, Osama bin Laden has not been found, and some people hate America as much as ever or more. When I saw the movie last week, the Council on Foreign Relations had just released a report in which a bipartisan task force headed by former Senator Warren Rudman found, as another Rudman task force found seven months before 9/11, that America is still ill-equipped to defend itself against most forms of "catastrophic attack." A few days later The Wall Street Journal reported that the Washington commission charged with uncovering our pre-9/11 preparedness failures had made "little progress" and was stymied by White House roadblocks to its requests for documents. Meanwhile it's onward and upward with ground zero. As we prepare to build anew, a Congolese artist in the Whitney show, Bodys Isek Kingelez, has already envisioned the site's future in a 2002 piece titled "New Manhattan City 3021." It's a large sculptural model of downtown, not unlike those exhibited in last winter's architectural commission, full of exuberant new skyscrapers. Lawrence Rinder, the curator of the exhibition, writes in its catalog that the work "suggests a strong faith in the American capacity for recovery and regeneration." Maybe so, but the artist's vision is of New York 3021, a millennium from now. In 2003 the soaring towers of "New Manhattan City" look all too chillingly like targets for terrorists. They are, you might say, the aesthetic correlative of the president's recent taunt to those shadowy forces attacking American troops in Iraq: "Bring 'em on." WTC Families Unhappy With Downtown PATH Terminal Some relatives of September 11 victims are unhappy with the new Downtown PATH train terminal. They say there are five structures that encroach on the footprints of the twin towers, including one emergency exit, two electrical sheds, an evacuation stairwell and a crash barricade. But the Port Authority says the structures are in place for safety reasons and they're temporary. A spokesman says the Port Authority is doing all it can to respect the footprints, but says it cannot compromise safety. NY1 9/11 KIN RIP PATH FOR 'TAINTING' HOLY GROUND By SUSAN EDELMAN ny post July 20, 2003 -- A group representing 9/11 victims' families says Gov. Pataki has allowed construction on the footprints of the Twin Towers and wants Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton to sponsor a federal law to prevent further "desecration" of the World Trade Center site. The 4,000-member Coalition for 9/11 Families called the governor - who vowed last summer, "We will never build where the towers stood" - "duplicitous" and a "Wizard of Oz." They say the governor has broken his promise to protect the WTC site, which the coalition's members consider sacred ground. The Port Authority, which is partly controlled by Pataki, is building four emergency exits, including walkways and stairwells, for a temporary WTC PATH station due to open in November. One of the 45-foot-long structures is built on land where the WTC's north tower once stood, along with a concrete crash barrier near a vehicle ramp leading down to the footprint. Another emergency exit for an electrical substation and several mechanical rooms have been built on parts of the south tower footprint, the PA confirmed. Patricia Reilly, whose sister Lorraine Lee, an Aon consulting employee, was killed in the attacks, said that Pataki had been sympathetic in the past. "I feel betrayed, and it's very painful," she said. "With all the talent and brain power at the PA, they couldn't figure out how to put the exits to avoid desecrating the footprint." Bill Doyle, who lost his son, Joseph, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee, said of Pataki, "He promised us one thing, and then he did something else." PA spokesman Greg Trevor said the exits are in the best position for evacuating the temporary station in an emergency. "They're going to be removed" when the permanent PATH station opens, which is expected in 2006, Trevor said. A Pataki spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment Friday. Clinton and Schumer have not made the families any promises. They issued a joint statement to The Post saying they have had "very useful meetings" with family members and "will continue encouraging consensus." NY DAILY NEWS 7 20 03 Where the WTC stands Financing clouds original vision By MAGGIE HABERMAN and GREG GITTRICH DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS Architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind Three months ago, Gov. Pataki stood before a luncheon of business leaders at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in lower Manhattan and set an aggressive timetable for rebuilding Ground Zero. He wanted architects to begin designing the signature 1,776-foot spire - envisioned by planner Daniel Libeskind - by this month. The steel for the tower would be in place by Sept. 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the attacks. Pataki acknowledged the goals would be tough to meet. "It leaves no room for error or delay," he said. Here's a rundown of where things stand and what major decisions lie ahead: Libeskind won an international design competition in February. Why is another architect now designing Libeskind's signature Freedom Tower? The tower and the other angular glass buildings in Libeskind's vision were intended to be illustrative - a point officials stressed leading to the selection of his plan in February. The goal of the design competition was to set aside specific land in the 16-acre disaster site for a memorial, a transportation hub, office buildings and the street grid. Then Pataki embraced Libeskind's signature skyscraper - implying that the architect would have an ongoing role in its construction. The problem: Pataki also needed to find someone to pay for the tower, and when asked after his optimistic April speech who would foot the bill, he replied: "Where's Larry?" No last name was necessary. Developer Larry Silverstein had signed a 99-year lease for the twin towers weeks before the hijacked jets exploded into the World Trade Center. Although Silverstein is mired in a legal battle with about 20 insurers, he stands to receive as much as $6.7 billion. So unlike the cash-strapped state and city, Silverstein expects he will have money to rebuild. He also has strong opinions and, like most developers on such projects, hired his own architect - David Childs - to flesh out Libeskind's vision. On Tuesday, Childs was given the lead role in designing the Freedom Tower after weeks of rancor over which architect would be in charge. Libeskind was given a secondary role. But while Libeskind had hoped for even more sway over the project, he walked away with a bigger role than he'd had before the issue was resolved. Isn't Childs' style very different from Libeskind's more sculptural approach? Yes. Childs is known for designing office towers, including the AOL Time Warner headquarters at Columbus Circle. Libeksind has spent most of his career as theorist and has gained fame for his cultural buildings, including the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Libeskind - who has never designed an office tower - drew the Freedom Tower so it scrapes the sky at 1,776 feet, a nod to the year of the nation's independence. In his design, the spire sits atop a building attached to a smaller office tower. Silverstein and Childs have taken a more pragmatic approach. Childs has drawn sketches that change Libeskind's design of the spire. In Childs' version, the spire sits on top of a 70-story office building - not next to one. Silverstein also prefers a revised plan that would shift the tower closer to the new transit hub - making it more commercially marketable. What role has Pataki played in getting Libeskind and Childs together? Pataki is the definitive leader of the rebuilding process. He holds the most sway over the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which oversees rebuilding, and the Port Authority, which owns Ground Zero. LMDC President Kevin Rampe and Chief Operating Officer Matt Higgins - both loyal to Pataki - summoned Childs and Libeskind to a private meeting Tuesday. The two were placed in a conference room overlooking The Pit and told to figure out a way to get along. Rampe said he told them that the project was "larger than either of them and needed both of their skills to be accomplished." Five hours later, they came to a handshake deal. "Certainly it's been contentious, but productive," Rampe said. "It's going to be contentious because the stakes are so high and the project is so important." How much influence does Mayor Bloomberg wield? Bloomberg has been able to shape some redevelopment decisions through Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff. But one way of getting the city more control - a land swap exchanging Kennedy and LaGuardia airports for Ground Zero - is dead. When will construction of the tower begin? Pataki hopes to lay the cornerstone of the building no later than August 2004. That month, his fellow Republicans, led by President Bush, will come to the city for the GOP national convention. How many office buildings will rise at Ground Zero? Silverstein has insisted that all 10 million square feet of office space destroyed at the World Trade Center be replaced. Silverstein's aides criticized Libeskind's plan, which envisions three office buildings and the Freedom Tower, as "not compatible with tenant needs." Silverstein has asked officials to squeeze another office building onto the site and diminish the girth of Libeskind's towers. But many rebuilding officials want to reduce the amount of office space on the 16 acres. The PA is considering buying land adjacent to the site so some of the 10 million square feet of commercial space can be moved off Ground Zero. But City Hall will protest such a move unless it can collect full taxes on the land - something it doesn't on other PA-owned properties. How does the memorial factor into all this? Libeskind's vision sets aside 4.7 acres for the memorial. The area leaves portions of the site's scarred slurry wall exposed. A jury will choose a design this fall from among more than 5,000 ideas submitted. Originally published on July 19, 2003 LONG ISLAND TOPIC Part of the Healing Debate over Nassau's 9/11 memorial is about shaping public memory By Susan J. Drucker and Gary Gumpert Susan J Drucker, a professor of journalism and mass media studies at Hofstra University, and Gary Gumpet, a professor emeritus of communication at Queens College of the City University of New July 20, 2003 Memorials are among the earliest media capable of communicating across generations an idea, value, person, event or deed that is symbolized and venerated. Their installation is part of a process of grief and mourning - an ephemeral process that can be represented in stages running from shock and panic to guilt, hostility and the reconciliation of grief. But who or what is being commemorated may be a matter of disagreement. From memorials for Holocaust victims to monuments for martyred political leaders to markers for those sacrificed in past wars, the debate is part of the shaping of public memory. And that is precisely what took place last week over plans for a Sept. 11 memorial in Eisenhower Park to remember the nearly 300 Nassau County victims of the terrorist attacks. The winning design by Keith Striga of Valley Stream and Phil Gavosto of Glen Cove envisioned two walls of commemoration - one dedicated to uniformed personnel and the other to the county's civilian victims. The design committee appointed by Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi's office selected the design last month, but expressed a preference for a single wall. The designers wanted to keep the two. Families and representatives of the victims, both civilians and rescuers, spoke out on both sides of the controversy. Late last week, after a meeting with county officials, the artists agreed to redesign the memorial to include one wall. All of the victims' names will appear in alphabetical order. For uniformed officers and rescue personnel, the emblems and shields of their agencies as well as their titles will appear alongside their names. In explaining the decision Friday, Ian Siegel, special assistant to the county executive for constituent affairs, said, "We just felt every life is an equal life." Although Siegel says the decision is final, there is always the possibility of more discussion. If that happens, the public should have a chance to comment because while such arguments end up delaying construction, a look at memorial design throughout history shows that discussion is actually a part of the process of commemoration. The division of the memorial into two walls would involve three elements: the aesthetics of design, the symbolic nature of that design and the experience of visitation. The clash between architectural vision and the committee overseeing the design involved not only differences regarding the look and feel of the memorial but represented distinct visions of commemoration. Two walls would create a specific public dialogue between visitor and memorial. This would promote a binary experience, in which the viewer would be led to make a distinction between victims and heroes. One wall says that the two kinds of victims deserve to be remembered equally and in the same way. Long Island has seen the need for commemoration before, and benefited from dialogue. The process of memorial creation for the 230 victims of TWA Flight 800 followed this pattern with positive results. Diverse designs were considered for Smith Point County Park in Shirley, which overlooks the site of the 1996 tragedy. They ranged from a bandshell to a park and a playground. Emotions ran high when TWA failed to contribute to the project. Then different ideas for the space emerged, from a private healing place for surviving family and friends to a more public place to return something to the community. It took four years to complete, but in the end the two-acre memorial and botanical garden pleased all who were involved in the design process. Right now, the same kind of dialogue is taking place over the long-delayed construction of an appropriate Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Like the 9/11 argument, defining the nature of "victim" has become the focus of the debate. Who were the victims? The Jews of Germany? All German victims? All European Jews? All European victims? The memorial is expected to be completed in 2005, but it's taken decades of disagreement, including court challenges, over the design. In the end, the hope is that consensus will be reflected in the memorial. Although the debate over victims is similar to the situation that faced Nassau, there is little precedent for deciding whether heroes and civilians deserve a different kind of recognition. This is because most U.S. civilians have been shielded from war and terrorism. So contestation over competing narratives - deciding whose story is to be told by and through the installation - is perhaps useful. This is how questions of appropriateness evolve through dialogue and debate. While Nassau reached a compromise with the memorial designers behind closed doors, the disagreement in vision might better have taken the form of a very public conversation. The principles of participatory design, using comment, hearings and interaction between designers and the public have worked successfully in the past in the creation of all sorts of planning projects. Everyone needs to recognize that the essence of dialogue, however difficult and contentious, is part of the emotional response to the events and the loss. Be it two walls or one, the architecture becomes a companion - the by-product of the real purpose, be it preservation of memory, storytelling or healing. If memorials and monuments are designed to facilitate remembering and avoid forgetting, then discussion is a necessary activity. Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc. Some 9/11 Remains Ended up in Fresh Kills: Families Want Them Moved to Ground Zero Memorial By Nina Pineda (Scotch Plains-WABC, July 9, 2003) — Nearly two years after the 9/11 terror attacks -- and many of the families of the victims are still angry. The issue for them is that much of the debris from the World Trade Center remains at a landfill. A campaign is being waged by some families to sift that debris again -- and transport any human remains to a memorial at Ground Zero. Here's Nina Pineda. Diane Horning, Families for Proper Burial: "This is Matt's ID badge from Marsh, and it was found at Fresh Kills." The company ID he wore around his neck turned up at the city dump first. A year later 26-year-old Matthew Horning's wallet was found, with everything down to a couple of scorched twenties still inside. Diane Horning: "It just makes me shake when I open it. Because I know he touched his Blockbuster card ..." It is more than many other families have of their loved ones killed on 9/11. After truckloads of World Trade Center rubble were screened for human remains what was left was buried on a desolate stretch of the fresh kills landfill, referred to as Hills One and Nine. Diane Horning: "We had full confidence that they would do what they said they would do. And we have no idea what happened. But when I went back after it was closed, it hit me like a ton of bricks. That they had just disposed of my son as though he were merely an inconvenience." Diane Horning is leading an effort to get the city to sift through the debris again and reclaim more remains. Working from her home in Scotch Plains she has gathered 30,000 signatures, gotten the support of 72 New Jersey municipalites and convinced two state assemblyman to draft legislation to get the ashes back. Neil Cohen, New Jersey Assemblyman: "It's a good cause and, I mean essentially this should be easy." But according to the city it won't be easy. Mayor Bloomberg met with families for a proper burial and made it clear the administration not going back to Fresh Kills, instead concentrating on four trailers which are in Memorial Park behind the medical examiner's office. They contain human remains still waiting for DNA analysis. The mayor's Liasion For 9/11 Families Christine Ferer stated: "Forensic detectives have sifted 3 times through almost 2 millions tons of what was removed from the WTC site. What remains at Memorial Park after the ME is finished will absolutely be part of a Ground Zero memorial." The park, which is located behind the ME's office, filled with human remains still waiting for DNA analysis. Nina Pineda: "Why go to Fresh Kills when they have remains that can be identified at Memorial Park? Neil Cohen: "Those are DNA and other particulates that represent someone's child, or someone's husband. There should be a proper burial." Diane Horning: "It is hallowed ground, and if you put up a memorial without burying the dead, it will be hollow ground." The families realize they have a long uphill and they also recognize that people will see this story and wonder why they just can't let it go. But they say that until they can visit their loved ones at Ground Zero, instead of at the Fresh Kills landfill, they'll continue to fight.