9/11 kin launch ad to protest memorial

Family members who are upset that details such as their loved ones' ages will be left off the Sept. 11 memorial created a television ad campaign in protest, and said Wednesday they could not support a private fundraising drive for the project.

The debate over how to list the names of the 2,979 people killed on Sept. 11 and in the 1993 trade center bombing is the latest and most divisive issue surrounding the memorial. Other disputes in the past year have centered on its cost, a design that once had the names of the dead listed underground and whether to build on the spots at the base of the towers where many victims' remains were found.

Construction on the memorial only began last spring, and the project will not be complete until 2009.

Family members created a 60-second television ad that was to begin airing Thursday on the NY1 cable channel. They said more ads may be launched later in other markets.

The ad mixes images of the flyers that families posted for missing loved ones after the attacks with words calling the latest proposal "a cold, random list of names."

"A memorial in name only is no memorial at all," read the commercial, which encourages opponents to sign a petition on a new family Web site.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who took over as chairman of the foundation building the memorial last fall, said Wednesday that the latest arrangement of names will not change.

"We've addressed the issue. As I said, you can't please everybody," Bloomberg said. "I think the naming issue is something that has been decided."

Family members and police and fire unions had long opposed architect Michael Arad's proposal to list the names of the dead in random order on parapets around two reflecting pools marking where the twin towers stood.

They issued a counterproposal in 2004, asking that the victims' ages, companies and, if applicable, tower floor be listed. First responders and crew members on the four hijacked jetliners that crashed on Sept. 11 would have been listed together, with their ranks.

Bloomberg announced a new arrangement last month grouping people according to where they worked or where they died. The flight numbers _ but not the airline _ would be listed on the memorial as well, along with the names of police and fire companies that responded. Some family members and the head of one firefighters' union have said they support the plan.

But many families still object to the idea. They said the listings are too minimalist and failed to show how young most of the victims were. They also complained that the proposal established a hierarchy between first responders, those who died on the planes and those who worked in trade center offices.

"We can't have two sets of victims," said Patricia Reilly, whose sister, Lorraine Lee, was killed in the trade center's south tower.

"We don't want them stripped of their affiliations. Unacceptable," said Edie Lutnick, whose brother, Gary, was one of 658 employees killed at the Cantor Fitzgerald bond brokerage, which lost more people than any single company on Sept. 11.

Tom Roger, a foundation board member whose daughter was a flight attendant on the plane that hit the Pentagon, said many family members were concerned that by listing so many company names, "to some, it would look like a corporate directory.

"It becomes a memorial to the company. These are not companies that died, these were people," Roger said.

Since Bloomberg took over the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation's board, he has helped raise more than $70 million in private money to help build the memorial. A separate museum, where officials say more detail about the victims could be included _ is set to open in 2010.

The memorial was redesigned _ and its near-$1 billion budget cut _ last summer after city and state officials said it was too expensive. Many family members tried to block any development on the bedrock slabs at the towers' base, where many of their loved ones' remains were found. The latest design brought the listing of names to a tree-covered plaza above ground.

Because the memorial includes no inscriptions to describe the 9/11 attacks, "the names have to tell the narrative," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles Burlingame, was the pilot of the hijacked plane that hit the Pentagon.

Burlingame is a board member of the foundation, which meets on Thursday. She said she wouldn't tell people not to give money to the memorial, but said, "I'm very uncomfortable asking the public for money without them knowing exactly what this is."

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On the Net:

Family Web site: http://www.savethe911memorial.com

World Trade Center Memorial Foundation: http://www.buildthememorial.org