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Remembering 9/11 'We have some planes.' FULL STORY
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Remembering 9/11 | What happened to ordinary men and women at Ground Zero helps explain why the road to reconstruct the World Trade Center has been long and torturous | Mindy Belz
Rosaleen Tallon (Photo by Adam Rountree/AP)
To begin to understand the pain for families who lost loved ones on 9/11, even 10 years later, Rosaleen Tallon need only read from the medical examiner's report that accompanied the return of her brother's remains:
"Sean P. Tallon . . . torso and extremities. Head absent. Reddish arm hair, multiple spine fractures, pelvic fracture, legs fractured, knees dislocated, ankles fractured and dislocated, right hand missing. Received in separate bag: head and broken helmet. Eyes not present. Decomposing."
Inside the cooling, smoking bowels of Ground Zero where Tallon—a firefighter—died when the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, workers found the following possessions, and returned them also to Tallon's family: a radio, bunker pants and jacket (Sean P. Tallon written on them), Pathmark discount card, extra-large blue shirt with "Tallon" embroidered on it and the certified first responder patch on the shoulder, blue boxer shorts, blue work shorts, boots, and two white socks.
As Tallon dryly read from the medical examiner's report at a briefing last February in Washington, D.C.'s Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, dark-suited businessmen and women in the packed reception room let tears stream down their faces. In front of me a woman's shoulders heaved and she slumped forward in her chair, burying her head in her hands while Tallon spoke. I asked her later if she too had lost a loved one on 9/11, but she shook her head no. A decade on, the gruesome details of what happened to ordinary men and women at Ground Zero bereaves not only families of victims but any who revisit the day's immeasurable trauma.
Yet nearly half of the victims who died in the twin towers were never identified. When the city's medical examiner's office in February 2005 announced that it was closing all investigations, having exhausted efforts to identify remains despite using advanced DNA techniques, it successfully had tagged only 1,630 of the dead. Of the 2,753 who died in the World Trade Center, only 293 bodies were found intact, and only 12 could be identified by sight.
At the same time, the medical examiner's office had recovered over 21,000 body parts at the site, including 200 linked to one person. Those who knew victims discovered that the grief of losing a loved one was compounded by the heartbreak of burying only body parts, or having no one to bury at all.
That in part explains why 9/11 family organizations remain active a decade later, and why Ground Zero remains the battleground it became the day Islamic jihadists flew planes into its towers. For many family members and friends, it is the only cemetery they have to visit. "Ground Zero is sacrosanct to New Yorkers and all Americans," said Tallon, who serves as family liaison for Advocates for 9/11 Fallen Heroes. "It's hallowed by the sacrifice of those innocent victims."
Given Ground Zero's multiple layers of ownership and control, its location at the center of the world's most lucrative financial district, and its reluctant role now as a national memorial, it's perhaps no wonder that much of the last decade has been consumed in battles over how to rebuild.
The controversy that erupted in 2010 over a proposed mosque just two blocks from the 16-acre site was only the latest fight. Before that, families of the victims for years tangled with city and state authorities over an appropriate remembrance at the site, given the pressure for owners to recoup money lost from office leases there.
Leaseholder Larry Silverstein pushed for redesigned twin towers as a way to get back the 10 million square feet of office space he lost on 9/11. Architects for the new space—three skyscrapers besides the grand 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower—repeatedly lobbied to expand the office spaces, impinging on the grounds for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
Against that tide, master planner Daniel Libeskind (see "The agony of victory," March 24, 2007) designed the memorial and museum at the World Trade Center site to reach seven stories underground, encompassing the full depth of the twin towers' destruction while exposing a slurry wall that resisted the force of the attacks (but likely would have flooded the city had it cracked). Many 9/11 families, according to Tallon, objected: "Initially there would be no names of the dead at street level. We were involved in getting the names out from underground and into the light."
Another battle arose over having the names of firefighters, police, and military personnel so designated. Firefighter names are listed together but without their rank. And most recently the museum has acquired remains from the office of the medical examiner to be used as "a programmable element," Tallon said, in its exhibits. "We want these elements out of the basement and given the separate dignity that they deserve," Tallon said.
Given those skirmishes, Tallon said she thought it was "a joke" when she first heard about plans to build a mosque and Islamic community center in the old Burlington Coat Factory. The building, a squat five-story Italianate structure built in the 1800s, took severe damage on 9/11 when plane parts—including landing gears and parts of a fuselage—crashed through the roof and down through two empty floors. Most Manhattanites thought the building had emptied after that, but for months starting in 2009, hundreds of Muslims have been meeting for Friday prayer services there, listening to an imam read from the Quran.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric at the center of the project along with developer Sharif El-Gamal, quietly had purchased the building in 2009. Together with a group of investors, they planned to tear down the current building and construct a 13-story Islamic cultural center and worship space. Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, served on an advisory board for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. One of the investors, Nour Moussa, is a nephew of the former Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, who is currently running for president in Egypt.
By the time Tallon and others learned of it, the Lower Manhattan Community Board already had given a go-ahead for the project. That was May 2010. Though protests over the site were growing, and there have been battles since to get the building designated a historic landmark and otherwise halt its transformation, there's little the city—or protesters—can do to stop developers who now own the site from using it as they wish.
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