I really like the quote on the wall of tiles (each one slightly difference color, one for each victim) as it applies to victims of any tragedy. It is fitting at the 9-11 museum, and it would be fitting at almost any other honorarium to victims.
I wanted to share a few pictures as it’s a relatively new museum. My next stop is Washington, D.C. where will visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and take a look at Henry’s original documents and photos that I haven’t seen in ten years (has it really been that long?)
As I walked through the 9-11 museum, I couldn’t help thinking about how other museums remember and honor their victims. In this particular setting, there are reflecting pools above ground at the sites of the two towers; in the middle water flows into a square with seemingly no end. The significance becomes clear when you visit the museum, which is all underground, in the ground floors of where the towers stood (the equivalent of the shopping and train stations that were there before.) Directly underneath the square reflecting pool is the room of ‘remembrance’ where four walls are covered floor to ceiling with color 8×10 photos of each victim.
I think it’s significant that the photos are in color – it’s current, it’s recent, it’s still raw. The museum strategically leaves tissue boxes around the room and there are escorts to help anyone out who may be overcome with emotion.
I was doing fine until the last room where they get into the audio from the day, the phone calls, the radio calls. The one that left the lasting impression on me was the message at 8:58 am from a husband on the 102nd tower to his wife after seeing the first tower. Something like ‘Honey, it’s really bad, you won’t believe it, but I’m ok.’ Four minutes later he calls again to say something like “Honey, they’ve given us an all clear here in the second tower, so we’re safe here. But I have to go.” Minutes later the second tower collapsed.
Photos – by author; Twisted metal is a beam broken at the exact point where one of the planes hit.
