Flight 93 Memorial: Who Does It Honor?
Friday, September 9th, 2005A design for the Flight 93 Memorial has been chosen, and you won’t be happy about it:
It will serve as a living tribute. With each wind, each breeze, a set of chimes housed in a 93-foot tower will create a different song in memory of the 40 people who sacrificed their lives trying to save the lives of others.
Four years after United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a reclaimed strip mine near Shanksville, Somerset County, on Sept. 11, 2001, the design that will serve as the national memorial was unveiled here yesterday in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Hall of Flags.
“Crescent of Embrace” will feature a Tower of Voices, containing 40 wind chimes — one for each passenger and crew member who died — and two stands of red maple trees that will line a walkway caressing the natural bowl shape of the land. Forty separate groves of red and sugar maples will be planted behind the crescent, and a black slate wall will mark the edge of the crash site, where the remains of those who died now rest.
Now, one of the first things that should have jumped out and announced itself to these people is that the name, “Crescent of Embrace”, can be construed as a veiled reference to the Islamic symbol, which is called a Crescent. Its plastered all over the place in Muslim countries. Which brings us to the second thing that should have caught their attention, the very shape and coloring of the proposed memorial, which closely resembles the Islamic symbol.
Can you say clueless? I knew that you could.
These people are trying to raise funds (approximately $30 million) to build this thing, and I don’t think anyone should donate until such time as the memorial is redesigned. In its present conception, it appears to honor the terrorists rather than the passengers, as it was meant to.
If you want to know more about the memorial and folks who are putting it together, they have a website. Please realize, most of the families who have seen the design actually like it, as the article points out:
“It’s powerful but understated,” said Kiki Homer, whose brother, LeRoy W. Homer Jr., was co-pilot on the plane that crashed after passengers rebelled against terrorist hijackers. “It’s beautifully simple.
“My breath is taken away.”
Esther Heymann, whose daughter, Elizabeth Wainio, died in the crash, agreed.
“The understatement speaks to the profoundness of what occurred here,” she said.
So, me and the people who have raised questions like I have may be off of our rockers. Go to the Memorial website and take a look at all of the finalists and decide for yourself.
The basic idea of the memorial — something understated, with wind chimes and a place to reflect on what happened — is perfect, I just don’t think it was executed as well as it could have been.
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September 15th, 2005 at 7:31 am
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