BY ALINE REYNOLDS | Fifty-six-year-old Joyce Daino barely escaped death on Sept. 11, 2001 as she frantically fled her office building on Pearl Street and Maiden Lane.
The trauma Daino experienced that day caused her to develop a debilitating autoimmune disease that has left her out of work and virtually immobile since summer 2002.
“Our bodies survived, but we still lost ourselves that day,” said Daino. “We were blown up emotionally.”
Attending the 2008 commemoration ceremony at Zuccotti Park, Daino said, was “the hardest” thing she had ever done, but also “the most healing thing.”
“As soon as I went in by the site, I could feel the presence of the victims, and I felt like I was coming home,” said Daino, who knew several people that died on 9/11, including a former mentor. “I get to grieve for the people that I lost, and also for the former me.”
Daino and close to 100 other members of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network will be denied the chance to grieve alongside victims’ family members this fall, per a city announcement that the group will not be allowed to attend the tenth anniversary commemoration ceremony.
“The commemoration ceremony is for victim’s family members, and this year… the expectation is there will be no opportunity for [survivors] to attend,” said a spokesperson for the Mayor’s office.
The spokesperson attributed the city’s decision to a space shortage at the W.T.C. site, particularly since the city is anticipating a greater number of family members in attendance than usual. “September 11th will again be an emotional day for victims’ family members, survivors, responders, millions of New Yorkers and people from all over the country and the world, but obvious space constraints on the [9/11] Memorial Plaza will limit the attendees to victims’ families,” the spokesperson said. “In years past, members of this survivor’s group were permitted to attend once it was clear that attendance numbers of victims’ family members would allow it.”
Members of the Survivors’ Network feel offended that they will be excluded from the name-reading ceremony this year, according to the group’s acting president, Richard Zimbler.
“Many members are taking it personally and consider it to be a slap in the face. We’ve been there every year, rain or shine, since 2004… we just felt that, as survivors, it’s our responsibility to bear witness and to honor our dead,” said Zimbler, a 9/11 survivor.
“I’m so saddened at the disrespect towards us. It feels dismissive, like they’re saying, ‘you survived, you lived, so you’re not important,’” said Daino.
“This anniversary is a very important one… what really hurts is being told, ‘if you want to be a part of this, you have to go hang out with the tourists.’ It just doesn’t seem right when we’re the ones who carry the history of the event,” echoed Maxime Laboy, who evacuated her office on the 17th floor of Tower Two the morning of 9/11.
Attending four of the commemoration ceremonies was “very powerful,” Laboy said, having known three dozen colleagues and acquaintances that died on 9/11. The ceremony, she said, “helps with the healing. I just feel like there should be a way that something could be worked out.”
Survivor Shannon Loy, from North Kansas, Missouri, began a petition the week of July 11, immediately after she was informed of the news.
The city should provide “alternative arrangements” for survivors if they can’t be accommodated on the Memorial Plaza, according to Loy, who has collected more than 600 petition signatures thus far.
Survivors include (but aren’t limited to) witnesses, friends, and colleagues of the deceased, and many were injured (some permanently) on that dark day, according to the petition. “They were forever changed by witnessing the loss of life and humanity in this national tragedy, and they deserve the right to mourn the loss with others and to show their gratefulness to those that paid the ultimate sacrifice for their lives,” it reads.
As a result of the city’s decision, Loy’s own hopes to return to Ground Zero this fall for the first time since 9/11 have been dashed. She’d rather be with close family and friends at home that day, she said, than amid the hoards of tourists and demonstrators.
“It’s very disheartening to me,” said Loy. “At this point, even if they were to change their mind, I wouldn’t come… it requires a lot of logistical planning [to come to New York].”
Loy, Zimbler and others are holding out hope that the city will find room for the survivors in or around the W.T.C. as the anniversary date approaches.
Zimbler told members of the survivor’s group in a July 12 e-mail that he and other steadfast survivors would be there “one way or the other,” even if that means joining the crowds.
Survivors are equally infuriated they can’t partake in the reading of victims’ names at the ceremony, which has always been exclusively reserved for family members.
“I think it’s more of an insult that survivors have never been invited to participate with family members in the reading of the names of the victims,” Zimbler said. “To me, that makes no sense.”
That request was quickly shot down last spring, however, even after the group launched a letter-writing campaign in support of the cause.
