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Today, VOICES is proud to officially announce our collaboration with September’s Mission on creating the 9/11 Living Memorial Project. The 9/11 Living Memorial Project was the vision of Monica Iken, Founder of September's Mission - to create an online interactive repository which will permanently chronicle the stories of our loved ones, the survivors, the rescue workers, and all those affected by 9/11. As you know VOICES began collecting testimonials, reflections and information on memorial foundations and foundation events in 2002. Our similar vision makes for a natural partnership on this important project. We will provide more details about the project in the coming weeks.
This week marked the end of the comment period on the Sciame report that made recommendations to modify the design of Reflecting Absence, the WTC Memorial/Museum. Although many of you expressed concerns about the brief period of time to comment, we hope you took the opportunity to voice your views. This afternoon the LMDC accepted the Sciame recommendations, bringing the names above ground and scaling back the original design. Hopefully we will now focus on other important issues that have yet to be resolved – such as the order of the victims names, placement of unidentified remains, access to both footprints of the building and in my view a private place to contemplate below grade.
The Mayors office also announced their plans for the 5th anniversary commemorative event on September 11th. Spouses, partners, and significant others will deliver the reading of the names of the victims during the ceremony, while music will provide a backdrop throughout the program. We encourage those interested in participating in the service to read the letter below that includes contact information. We also want to take this opportunity to remind you to mark your calendars for our annual September 10th Information Forum and September 11th Commemorative Luncheon. The events will be held again at the Marriott Financial Center Hotel in NYC. We are in the process of finalizing our programs and will distribute a brief questionnaire next week to ask for your input.
Finally, we are beginning the July 4th holiday weekend and the VOICES office will be closed on Monday, July 3rd and Tuesday, July 4th in observance of Independence Day. We wish you an enjoyable long weekend with family and friends as we celebrate America’s birthday.
Warm Regards,
Mary Fetchet
Expect more
information and a survey on what you want to experience at our Forum and
Luncheon by e-mail next week.
VOICES of September
11th cordially invites you to attend our annual Information Forum and
Commemorative Luncheon to mark the Fifth Anniversary. Both events
will be held at the Marriott Financial Center Hotel,
85 West Street,
New York City
adjacent to the WTC site.
The Information Forum, which is open to
September 11th families, survivors and rescue workers, will be held on Sunday, September 10th. Activities will
focus on building resiliency and gathering together to remember our loved
ones five years after 9/11. Once again this year, children’s
activities will be available during Sunday’s Information Forum.
The Commemorative Luncheon will be on Monday, September 11th immediately
following the Commemorative Events. We are in the planning stages and will
keep you updated in the VOICES e-Newsletter and the VOICES website on the
schedule of events for both September 10th and 11th. We welcome your
suggestions and hope you are able to join other VOICES members from across
the country and world as we continue to expand our community of support and
friendship for all those affected by 9/11.
When: Monday,
July 10th
Time: Brunch 9:30 am, 12 Noon
Shotgun start, Dinner 6:30 pm`
Where: Great River
Golf Club,
Milford CT
Contact: Invitation and Website with
sign-up
Please
join us at the Fourth Annual Chris Slattery Golf Classic. Rain or dry, the
sun always shines at Great River Golf Club as we celebrate Chris’
memory, his humor, and his joy for the game he loved to play. Your
continued support of the Chris Slattery Memorial Scholarships at
Chaminade
High School and
Fairfield
University
in past years has provided students at both institutions with the dollars
they needed to continue their pursuit of a quality education. Whether you
come to play, to volunteer, or just to have fun at the dinner/auction,
please know that your support bolsters our family’s resolve to keep
Chris’ memory alive in all our hearts.
Please
click here to send us information on your memorial or foundation event. The
information will be posted on the VOICES website and included in upcoming
e-Newsletters.
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Official 9/11 Commemorative Events
Announced |
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The official City and State
commemorative events for September 11th will be held again this year at the
World
Trade
Center
site. This week family members received a letter from
the Mayor's office with preliminary details on the program.
According to the letter, "this year spouses, partners, and significant
others will deliver the reading of the names of the victims during the
ceremony, while music will provide a backdrop throughout the program."
The program is scheduled to end at noon, but, as in previous years, family
members will be able to descend to the lowest level of the site to pay
respects and lay flowers until 3 pm.
All 9/11 Families should have received
the letter this week. Please use the contact information included in the
PDF file linked above if you did not receive a letter or would like to
participate in the events.
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A
new design for the reinforced base of The Freedom Tower, the most ambitious
and troubled of the new skyscrapers planned for the revitalized WTC site,
was unveiled this week by lead architect David M. Childs. The previous
versions of the base, added to protect the tower from truck bombs, were
criticized for looking like a fortress, and projecting an image of fear
rather than patriotism and resolve. The new design is meant to make the
windowless base appear more welcoming by wrapping the 187-foot-high, bomb-resistant
concrete base in a screen of glass prisms rather than metal panels. The
Freedom Tower's spire structure will rise to the symbolic height of 1,776
feet with a rooftop deck at 1,368 feet above the street, the same height as
1 World Trade Center, the north tower. A slideshow of illustrations showing
the new design is available on the Washington
Post Website. The
Freedom
Tower will dominate the
Manhattan skyline, as
seen in the illustration provided by David M. Child's firm, Skidmore,
Owings & Merrill.
Despite
the new design revisions, the future of the
Freedom
Tower
still depends on convincing tenants to return to Ground Zero. The effort
got a big boost this week with the announcement that the U.S. Customs and
Border Protection Service will occupy up to 600,000 square feet in the
tower. Pataki also said that the state's Office of General Services would
take 400,000 to one million square feet in the 2.6 million-square-foot
Freedom
Tower,
as state leases expire in other
Lower Manhattan
office buildings, according to New York
Times coverage. "We are extremely optimistic we'll have
no trouble meeting that million-square-foot threshold so that the Port
Authority will step in and take the
Freedom
Tower," Pataki said from a platform overlooking Ground Zero, as quoted in the New York
Post.
But
the tower may not even be built on schedule unless the Port Authority and
developer Larry Silverstein receive billions of dollars in insurance
payments currently being contested.
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This week
Silverstein and the Port Authority filed suit against the insurers,
claiming that they are using an April deal that redivided the financing and duties for building office towers at ground zero as a
pretext to "shirk their contractual obligations" to fund
rebuilding. We
"will not allow foot-dragging insurance companies to impede the
ongoing revitalization of downtown
Manhattan," Silverstein is quoted in NY Newsday coverage. He has been awarded $4.6 billion in insurance to pay rent for
rebuilding rights at ground zero and to build the Freedom
Tower, and about $2.4 billion has
been paid to date. Some WTC redevelopment workers protested the insurance companies' intransigence this week at
Ground Zero. Seen at right is Peter Bottigliero,
46, a union painter dressed in makeshift Arab garb who held a placard tying
one of the insurance companies, Allianz AG, to
the author of the Twin Towers' destruction: "Osama sez:
I Love Allianz Insurance!"
As expected, today the LMDC Board
accepted the Sciame report outlining a workable
plan for the WTC memorial (read Associated Press coverage), but many
important issues have yet to be resolved. One issue of special importance
to 9/11 families is how the names of WTC victims will be displayed
above-grade on parapets (low walls) ringing the twin reflecting pools. A
proposal from an alliance of WTC Family Member and FDNY groups that would
arrange the names by the towers in which the victims worked and died, by affiliation
(their employers, typically), and by floor, with their ages next to their
names, according to Edith Lutnick, the executive
director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund. The plans are outlined and a
visual mock-up of the Family Groups' proposed arrangement is available on
the New York
Times website.
Family opposition has had a
negative effect on fundraising for the Memorial, and many Family Members
have drawn a line in the sand over the names by refusing to endorse the
Memorial design until the naming issue is resolved to their satisfaction.
Thomas S. Johnson, the chairman of the executive committee of the World
Trade Center Memorial Foundation and a director of the Lower Manhattan
Development Corporation, is quoted in New York
Times coverage: "This issue is so important to so many
family members... If there's any nonnegotiable issue, this is it. An
acceptable way of listing the names has to be there, or I'm afraid the
families aren't going to be there."
Family members
should be aware that the trailer for the Oliver Stone movie "
World
Trade
Center" will be playing before screenings of the following movies:
The Devil Wears Prada – opens June 30th
Lady in the Water – opens July 21st
Miami Vice – opens July 28th
The trailer will
also continue to be shown with The DaVinci Code
and The Break Up
Also,
TV and outdoor advertising for the film will soon be released. TV ads for
the movie will begin to appear on a limited basis on July 3rd and 4th,
during programs such as daytime talk shows, some sports broadcasts, and
shows about entertainment, and then will begin to reappear beginning July
17th. Outdoor advertising (i.e. bus shelters, billboards, mass transit,
etc.) will begin to appear in
Los
Angeles this weekend and then nationwide on July
17th. Please note that there will be NO outdoor advertising for the film in
New York and
New Jersey. The movie poster will
continue to be displayed in theaters nationwide.
9/11 Family Members
with questions or comments are urged to contact Jennifer Brown at
(973) 206-9112.
9/11 group
suing city over remains at Fresh Kills -- Hundreds of human
body parts -- not small fragments -- from victims of Sept. 11, 2001, are
buried in the Fresh Kills landfill, according to a 9/11 family group which
is suing the city (Staten Island Advance)
New Profile
of Home-Grown Terrorist Emerges -- Armed with few means but
plenty of ideological fervor, an emerging corps of wannabe terrorists is
scoping out skyscrapers, conducting terror-training camps, and, in one
case, even attacking Americans by using a Jeep (Christian Science Monitor)
Homeland
Security chairman wants charges against Times -- The
chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee called yesterday for
criminal prosecution of The New York Times, saying that its report Friday
on
U.S.
government
surveillance of confidential banking records "compromised
America
's
anti-terrorist policies." (
Baltimore
Sun)
Argument
Against Report Puzzles NYT Editors -- The New York Times is
defending itself from criticism about a report on secret financial
monitoring of terrorists, saying it found arguments by Bush administration
officials against publishing it "puzzling" and
"half-hearted." (Associated Press)
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