9/11 Memorial and Museum

June 19, 2018

 

 

9/11 Memorial and Museum

One of the things that I wanted to be sure to visit while we were in New York City was Ground Zero and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. We had not visited the site since the early spring of 2002, when recovery was still actively going on and the area was still in a devastated condition. At that time the site was basically a huge hole in the ground full of heavy equipment that was still sorting through and removing rubble. Surrounding the site was a wooden temporary wall that was completely covered by photos of those killed in the attacks as well as messages of love and support for the survivors, the families of those lost, the first responders and even the construction crew that had the grim job of excavating the terrible debris.

 

Memories of September 11, 2001 are still as fresh and visceral to me today as I am sure they are for most Americans and I felt it was about time that I visited the memorial and museum. We purchased tickets for a guided tour of the memorial. I am not generally a guided tour kind of person, but this one was excellent and we learned way more than we might have otherwise with our excellent guide.

 

I know that the design of the Memorial and construction of the Freedom tower were somewhat controversial as plans were being discussed, but what they have created is truly awesome, reflective and inspiring. The memorial is a forest of white swamp oak trees that outline the perimeter of where the twin towers that were destroyed in the attack once stood, twin huge reflecting pools mark the outline of the former buildings. The pools are surrounded by bronze parapets that hold the names of each of the 2,977 victims who perished in the attacks.

 

It is a beautiful tribute to those lost and to those who helped rescue so many more. It is estimated that over 14,000 people were inside the twin tours as it was attacked, so the rescue effort is truly remarkable and something that is often overlooked when considering that day. It was a perfect sky blue day as we toured the site, viewing the names and considering what had taken place there.

Kathy searched through the names to find a friend from her high school days at Proctor Academy who was lost that day, Edward Francis Maloney III. It was a pretty emotional thing to see someone you know memorialized like that. Scattered among the names were a few single white roses, the park staff place a white rose on each name on the date of their birthday as a memorial offering and it brings home the tragedy even more.

 

There were a number of children and young adults touring the site and it seems startling to me to think that most of them were not even born when the attacks occurred and yet have grown up their entire lives in the shadow of that day’s influence and all that it means to our way of life.

 

If the memorial is beautiful and touching, the museum is heartwrenching. Inside the massive underground caverns that house the museum and are located at the very bedrock of the original buildings, the museum offers silent testimony to what happened. 

 

In addition to areas devoted to the victims and where you can learn more about them, there are the terrible remnants of that day on display. From crushed fire engines and police vehicles to partially burned random papers from the offices once housed in the twin towers, the massive amount of fairly ordinary objects completely destroyed and sometimes unrecognizable give testimony to the terrible power of the destruction.

 

It was the smaller more personal items that really got to me though, a seatbelt from one of the planes that plunged into the towers for example. Some poor lost soul was strapped in to their seat with that seatbelt and it just seems so terrible and random. The collection includes more than 40,000 images, 14,000 artifacts, more than 3,500 oral recordings, and over 500 hours of video.

The entire experience is at once sad and overwhelming, but there was one part that left us feeling especially hopeful, the Survivor Tree. A callery pear tree recovered from the rubble at the World Trade Center site in October 2001 was later called the "Survivor Tree". When the 8-foot (2.4 m)-tall tree was recovered, it was badly burned and had one living branch. 

Not expected to survive the tree was taken to a nursery in the Bronx and surprisingly was nursed back to health, making a miraculous full recovery. The tree was returned to the World Trade Center site in a special ceremony in December, 2010 and today stands as a living reminder of the thousands of survivors of the attacks who persevered in the face of such tragedy.

 

https://www.911memorial.org/museum