N.Y. Journal: A need to remember

With the eighth anniversary of the terror attacks of Sept. 11 coming up on Friday, a 16,000-square-foot memorial quilt remains hidden in a tractor-trailer in Atlanta because New York City says it doesn't have the room.

Corey Gammel, founder of United in Memory, started the quilt with a website asking people to create quilt squares in memory of each 9/11 victim. Over 3,000 people sent in squares from around the world, with them learning about each victim and personalizing the effort. Until recently the quilt traveled to cities across the United States, making an appearance at St. John's University on Staten Island, where over 1,000 people viewed it.

But efforts to display the quilt in Manhattan this year have met a dead end, said Dennis McKeon, executive director of Where to Turn. He tried getting space near Ground Zero or the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and asked the mayor's office for help with no results. While it's difficult to find 10,000 feet of open floor space in Manhattan, McKeon thinks the memory of 9/11 has faded: "We want the people who died to be remembered. People forget that 3,000 human beings were killed that day, and you know, they need to be remembered."

I know that for New York residents, Ground Zero is the place that you silently wish you could talk your visitors out of seeing. The reasoning goes something like, "I know it's an important site, but it's really just a hole in the ground with backhoes and you can't see anything through the fences anyway. And I don't want to be insensitive, but I've seen it so many times." Seeing the 9/11 kitsch for sale---the light-up plastic twin towers you can't imagine even tourists wanting to buy---is always a little embarrassing. Your own lack of emotion is embarrassing, too.

Remembrances are souring in other states, too. Four years after public officials first broke ground at a memorial site in Liberty State Park in New Jersey, the New Jersey 9/11 Memorial Foundation has only been able to raise $15,000 of the $12 million it needs to finish the project. A nonprofit group called Friends of Liberty State Park has filed a suit against the memorial, saying it will block the view. In Greenwich, Conn., officials are fighting over whose names should go on its 9/11 memorial---only those who were town residents when they died in the towers, or those who had loose ties to Greenwich, too.

Meanwhile, Where to Turn is trying to raise support to give the quilt a permanent home in Staten Island, hoping to renovate an abandoned complex and create a memorial garden---a serene location removed from the tourist traps that's more than "a stop on the bus tour," McKeon said.