9/11 memorial planners announce names' arrangement

NEW YORK — Victor Wald and Harry Ramos did not know each other until Sept. 11, but they died together trying to flee down a stairwell of the World Trade Center. Their names will be next to each other’s on the national memorial at ground zero, one of hundreds of arrangements that emphasize victims’ connections, not in alphabetical order. The National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum announced the final arrangement of the nearly 3,000 names around the waterfall-filled pools formed in the footprints of where the original World Trade Center towers stood. Michael Arad, the memorial architect, said that stories of the individuals’ lives will inevitably emerge from the names’ arrangement. “I think those individual stories will communicate very powerfully to generations to come,” he said. The announcement may not satisfy all survivors, especially given the complexity of the arrangement of the names. The memorial planners said they had mailed letters to more than 3,500 next-of-kin to tell them the location of victims’ names. The application will be running on handheld devices, tablet computers and electronic kiosks on the plaza of the memorial when it opens in September, the tenth anniversary of the attacks. Listed on the memorial will be the names of the 2,976 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania; and the six people who died in the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center. The 9/11 victims are grouped on the memorial according to which flight they were on, whether they were first responders, worked at the Pentagon or were in one of the trade center towers. One of the most contentious debates around the “Reflecting Absence” memorial has centered on how the names would be listed. Initially, the names were to be listed below ground, but survivors objected. After much debate, it was decided that the names would appear not in alphabetical order, but where the victims had died. “The need to create a memorial that has names is a surrogate for a cemetery,” said, Brigitte Sion, a professor of religion at New York University, adding that many bodies of 9/11 victims have yet to be found for proper burial. “There’s no other place to mourn, there’s no other place to have a connection with the victims except there.” More than 40 percent of the victims in New York have no identifiable remains, but authorities hope to identify thousands more with DNA technology. Online: http://names.911memorial.org