BY JOHN BAYLES | For the last nine years, Lower Manhattan residents have been on the outside looking in when it comes to the official ceremony commemorating the anniversary of 9/11. Many of them want this year, the tenth anniversary, to be different.
Joe Daniels, president of the National September 11th Memorial and Museum, fielded numerous questions at a Community Board 1 meeting on Monday night concerning the issue. Currently, only family members of those who died will be allowed to visit the memorial when it opens in less than 90 days.
“I came here tonight, in a certain sense, ready for a fight,” said Linda Belfer, chair of C.B. 1’s Battery Park City Committee. “Again we’re being overlooked, not being able to come on 9/11 and be part of the ceremony.”
Daniels told Belfer he didn’t want a “fight” and, instead, pointed out that the mayor’s office is actually in charge of the commemoration ceremony on the day of the anniversary. He said the idea to hold “community evenings,” reserved specifically for Lower Manhattan residents, on the first Sunday of every month from October to January came “straight from the heart,” and that the decision to keep the anniversary a “family-members-only” event, was not his.
“Thanks,” said Belfer, “but it’s still an afterthought.”
Daniels said it was his understanding that for the last nine years the mayor’s office has coordinated all anniversary activities. When pressed as to whether family members had specifically asked for the day to be reserved for them and them only, Daniels said that was not the case. However, he did state that the families had expressed an appreciation and gratitude for having a day that was especially for them.
C.B. 1 member Bill Love said he didn’t want to compare himself to a family member, but did ask Daniels to consider a new idea.
“It might be worth exploring with the mayor’s office, at least as a token representation, the idea of a sunset ceremony,” said Love.
Jeff Galloway seconded Love’s notion.
“We’re not comparing ourselves to family members, but we feel worse off than the run-of-the-mill person who can just go their park square and get together [on the anniversary]” said Galloway. “But we have a very real connection and not just because we’ve been inconvinced.”
Many community board members asked Daniels to consider having a separate ceremony on the tenth anniversary, after the family members had left, that would be for Lower Manhattan residents only. They said if it meant, logistically, that the memorial couldn’t open until the 13th, that Daniels should still consider it as an option.
“From a practical standpoint,” replied Daniels, “we’ve been announcing for a long time now that the memorial would be open to the rest of the world on September 12th.”
