The Freedom Tower

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly today presided over a Police Memorial Day ceremony commemorating 11 New York City Police Officers who were killed in the line of duty last year or died of illnesses developed as a result of rescue, recovery and clean-up work they performed at the World Trade Center Site after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The names of Detective Kevin Hawkins, Detective Russel Timoshenko, Detective Robert Williamson, Detective John Young, Detective James Zadroga, Police Officer Thomas Brophy, Police Officer James Godbee, Police Officer Ronald Weintraub, Police Officer Angelo Peluso, Auxiliary Police Officer Eugene Marshalik, and Auxiliary Police Officer Nicholas Pekearo were added to those of other fallen officers whose sacrifices are commemorated on plaques in the Police Memorial Lobby inside Police Headquarters.

“These men all demonstrated their bravery in different ways, but what binds them together – and to us – is their unfailing service to New York City,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “All eleven of these men put themselves in harm’s way to protect us. Their names are forever inscribed in the hearts of those who knew them. And today, they will also be inscribed on the Wall of Heroes here at One Police Plaza, so that future generations will know of their courage and sacrifice.”

“While today’s commemorations make permanent the memory of these brave men, there can be no more enduring tribute than the respect and support of the public whom all officers are sworn to protect and serve,” said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. “New York City Police officers accept that in the performance of their duties, lives are at stake including their own. Today we convey nothing less than the highest regard for their service and sacrifice.”

Detective Russel Timoshenko died July 14, 2007 after being shot at close range five days earlier during an attempted car stop in Brooklyn. He and his partner Detective Martin Yan were approaching a sport-utility vehicle bearing stolen license plates when they were fired upon. Their assailants were apprehended after a multi-day manhunt that ended in Pennsylvania. Detective Timoshenko joined the Department in January 2006 and was a police officer in the 71st Precinct. He was promoted posthumously and is survived by his parents Tatyana and Leonid Timoshenko.

Detective Kevin G. Hawkins died May 7, 2007 of 9/11 related illness after serving over 20 years with the Department. He worked in the 17th Precinct, the Executive Protection Unit of the Intelligence Division, and the Patrol Borough Manhattan South Task Force, as well as in the rescue, recovery and clean-up effort at the World Trade Center site. Detective Hawkins was recognized three times for excellent police duty and meritorious service. He is survived by his wife Marie and daughters Natalie and Stephanie, mother Dorothy and brother Dave.

Detective Robert W. Williamson died May 13, 2007 of 9/11 related illness after serving 20 years with the Patrol Borough Manhattan South Anti-Crime unit. He made 203 felony arrests and was recognized 38 times in his career for excellent police duty, meritorious service and other commendations. Detective Williamson was a part of the rescue, recovery and clean-up effort at the World Trade Center site. He is survived by his wife Maureen, son Joseph and daughters Katelyn and Laura, mother Blanche and sister Jayne.

Detective John T. Young died in February 2007 of 9/11 related illness after serving 20 years. He worked in the Midtown South Precinct and was a member of the Detective squad there, as well as in the 34th and 50th Precincts. He made 203 felony arrests and received eight recognitions for excellent police duty and two for meritorious service in his career. In addition to the rescue, recovery and clean-up effort at the World Trade Center site, Detective Young worked at the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island after the Sept. 11 attacks, Detective Young is survived by his wife Maura, son John and daughters Kristin and Shannon, and his parents Bob and Ann.

Detective James Zadroga died in January 2006 of 9/11 related illness after serving nearly 11 years with the Department. He worked in the 6th Precinct, and 25th Precinct Detective squad, as well the Detective Borough Manhattan South Homicide Task Force, the Street Crime Unit and Patrol Borough Bronx Anti-Crime unit. Detective Zadroga made 136 felony arrests and received 31 recognitions for excellent police duty and seven for meritorious service. He worked in the rescue, recovery and clean-up effort at the World Trade Center site and is survived by his daughter Tyler-Ann and parents Joseph and Linda.

Police Officer Angelo Peluso died in May 2006 of 9/11 related illness. He served for over 18 years, in the Department’s 10th Precinct, the Detective Bureau Criminal Identification Unit, Photo Unit and License Division. Officer Peluso received two excellent police duty recognitions, and two meritorious service recognitions. He also was a part of the rescue, recovery and clean-up effort at the World Trade Center site. Officer Peluso is survived by his wife Kim, son Daniel and daughter Noelle, and father Angelo.

Police Officer James J. Godbee died in December 2004 of 9/11 related illness after 18 years of service in the 28th Precinct and Manhattan Housing Borough. Officer Godbee was recognized three times in his career for meritorious service, and worked in the rescue, recovery and clean-up effort at the World Trade Center site, as well as at various posts in Lower Manhattan after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Officer Godbee is survived by his wife Michelle, daughter Imani and son Kai, parents James and Rena, brother Kevin and grandmother Dora Brown.

Police Officer Ronald E. Weintraub died in November 2005 of 9/11 related illness after 15 years with the Department. He worked in the Midtown South Precinct and was recognized five times in his career for excellent police duty and meritorious service. Officer Weintraub also provided rescue, recovery and clean up efforts at the World Trade Center site. He is survived by his wife Eileen, daughter Danielle and son Ryan, parents Sheila and Arnold and sister Sharon.

Police Officer Thomas G. Brophy died in April 2005 of 9/11 related illness after 11 years of service in the 114th and 109th Precincts and Fleet Services Division. He too received recognition for excellent police duty. Officer Brophy worked in the rescue, recovery and clean-up effort at the World Trade Center as well as at various posts in Lower Manhattan after the attacks. He is survived by his wife Rita and son Matthew, mother Janice and brother Brian, a New York State Trooper.

Auxiliary Police Officers Eugene Marshalik and Nicholas T. Pekearo were killed in March 2007 by a deranged gunman who shot and killed a pizzeria employee in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village before assaulting and firing upon the two auxiliary police partners who had followed him to observe and report his changing locations as he fled the murder scene. Officers Marshalik and Pekearo were members of the volunteer police team in the 6th Precinct. Last month, the Justice Department reversed an earlier denial and approved federal death benefits for their families under the federal Public Safety Officers Benefits program which compensates the survivors of police, firefighters and other public safety officers who die in the line of duty.

Police Memorial Day was established by Congress in 1962 and proclaimed by President John F. Kennedy in 1963, designating May 15 of each year Peace Officers Memorial Day in honor of the Federal, State, and municipal officers who have been killed or disabled in the line of duty; he also designated the week in which it occurs, “Police Week,” in recognition of the service given by the men and women who, “night and day, stand guard in our midst to protect us through enforcement of our laws.”

The New York Daily News says New York State officials are now saying “More than 360 workers who dealt with the aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster have died.

state health officials said last week they have determined the cause of death of 154 of the responders and volunteers who toiled at Ground Zero, the blocks nearby and at the Fresh Kills landfill, where debris from the site was taken.

Of those, 80 died of cancer.

“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said David Worby, who is representing 10,000 workers - 600 with cancer - who say they got sick after working on rescue and recovery efforts.

“These statistics bear out how toxic that site was,” Worby said.

Most of the deadly tumors were in the lungs and digestive system, according to the tally from the state’s World Trade Center Responder Fatality Investigation Program.

Other deaths were traced to blood cancers and heart and circulatory diseases. Five ex-workers committed suicide, said Kitty Gelberg, who is tracking the deaths for the program.

Gelberg said she had not yet determined whether the number of cancer deaths was more or less than those typically occurring in men in their 20s to 50s who work as cops, firefighters or laborers - the majority of 9/11 workers.

“We are not saying all of these deaths are World Trade Center-related,” Gelberg said. “Without the statistics, we are not making judgment.”

She added that relatives of people who died of cancer may be likely to link their loved one’s death to their 9/11 work and add them to the database, despite other possible factors.

But Gelberg said she is compiling the deaths from public sources, individuals and agencies and believes there is an overall undercount of workers who have died. The statistics cover Sept. 12, 2001, through yesterday.

The city Health Department said it was “actively examining whether deaths have been elevated as a result of 9/11.”

Another theorist believes something other than terrorist brought down the World Trade Center. This new conspiracy theorist is Richard Gage. Gage presented his views to an audience last week that suggests the involves specially timed explosives, a team of experts and a well-orchestrated cover-up by our own government, according to a story in the California publication City News from City on A Hill Press.

“As part of a group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Gage traveled to Santa Cruz on May 2 to present “9/11: Blueprint for Truth,” a PowerPoint and film presentation that contests the official story of what brought down the towers.

During the presentation, Gage challenged the theories put forth by several governmental agencies that studied the collapse of the towers, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), saying that none of the previous studies hold up under scrutiny.
“The skyscrapers, welded together and designed not to bend, dropped like a house of cards,” Gage said. “Theories of previous studies don’t account for straight-down collapse or the characteristics of demolitions.”

He rejected the notion that fire collapsed the towers, and told the audience that it was precisely timed explosives possibly deployed by our government.

“How could eight scattered fires bring down World Trade Center Building Seven in a few seconds?” he asked the audience.

Gage presented a side-by-side comparison of a controlled demolition of a building with that of the Twin Towers and the lesser-known World Trade Center Building Seven.

He explained that in controlled demolitions, thousands of cutter charges are precisely placed and timed, resulting in a vertical, symmetrical collapse into a tidy rubble pile.

He told the audience about a chemical compound known as Thermate, which can cut through and melt steel. Thermate has a unique chemical signature, and there was residue in the dust, rubble and on the very beams of the towers.

“[Thermate] is not made in a cave in Afghanistan,” Gage said.

He presented video eyewitness testimonies of Sept. 11 in which firefighters, emergency responders, news reporters and bystanders said they heard explosions which sounded like demolitions.

The Louden Nelson Community Center room was flooded with applause as the crowd gave Gage a standing ovation.

Rainey Shuler, an audience member, claims that the mainstream media could be just as responsible for a cover-up.

“The constant bombardment of news keeps people in a fog,” Shuler said.

Another audience member, Sandra Taylor, believes that citizens are part of the problem and remembers a time when more people organized and took action.

“We have to think beyond ourselves,” Taylor said. “To acknowledge the truth means we have to take it on.”

Demanding a new investigation by the government and a grassroots movement for change, Gage urged the audience for action.

“We’re not conspiracy theorists,” Gage said. “This is much bigger than just the buildings.”

Another first responder has been added to the list of New York Police heroes who worked to rescue victims at the World Trade Center. The Seattle Times says it took more “than two years after he took his last breath, but “a detective who developed lung disease after toiling in the World Trade Center’s ruins has been added to the New York Police Department’s wall of heroes.

“James Zadroga was one of eight officers who died of post-Sept. 11 illness added to the NYPD’s memorial wall, their names engraved onto bronze plaques in the lobby of police headquarters. They became the first NYPD members to be memorialized for dying of illnesses they blame on the dust they breathed at ground zero.

“It gives a just honor to Jimmy and to the other officers who worked that day and the days that followed,” said Joseph Zadroga, James Zadroga’s father, at Wednesday’s ceremony.

Zadroga, 34, worked hundreds of hours at ground zero beginning Sept. 11, 2001. He soon developed respiratory ailments and died in January 2006 of lung disease.

He became a symbol of ailing ground zero workers after a New Jersey autopsy concluded his death was caused by exposure to Sept. 11 dust. The family sought to add him to the Sept. 11 victims’ list, but the city medical examiner said no, concluding the improper use of prescription drugs contributed to Zadroga’s lung disease.

“I just hope that maybe they won’t forget now,” said Joseph Zadroga, who still wants his son’s name listed on the Sept. 11 memorial.

Other officers recognized for their deaths of Sept. 11-related illnesses include James Godbee, an officer who died in 2004 of lung disease; Robert Williamson, a detective who died of pancreatic cancer a year ago; Det. Kevin G. Hawkins; Det. John T. Young; Officer Angelo Peluso; Officer Ronald E. Weintraub; and Officer Thomas G. Brophy.

Three other officers killed in the line of duty last year were also added to the wall.”

The proposed United States Airlines Flight 93 memorial was criticized by some opponents who said the design included Islamic symbols, according to ENews 2.0.

The UK news service says opponents of the design have rallied behind this latest snag in the development of the memorial.

“The temporary memorial is located on a hillside 500 yards from the site of the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked in the September 11, 2001 attacks, in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, situated about 2 miles north of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

One of the opponents, Harry Beam, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, presented a petition filled with 5,300 signatures to put an end to the project of the memorial. The petition was showed to the design members of the Flight 93 boards during the meeting of the Flight 93 Memorial Task Force at the Somerset County Courthouse.

It all began when the Flight 93 Advisory Commission announced a memorial design from Paul Murdoch Architects of Los Angles; the project was called “Crescent of Embrace” and some people saw in the crescent-shape design a symbol of Islam, saying that, in this way, the memorial subtly includes the hijackers alongside the victims in Shanksville, Pa. on September 11th.

“It’s really revolting to me, this whole thing,” Mr. Burnett, a retired high school English teacher from Northfield, Minn, who signed the petition, was quoted as saying by the New York Times. “It’s an insult to my son and all the others,” he added.

As a result, the original title was changed; “Crescent of Embrace” became “Circle of Embrace.” The National Park Service, which supports the construction of the memorial, also changed the design, adding trees to encircle the site.

On the other hand, the designer rejected the accusations, saying he sees this as a “distortion of the facts” and that he will continue his project with an “overwhelming support for the design.” Paul Murdoch’s project will also include a plaza situated along the edge of the crash site.

“The forms that the design uses come out of the forms of the land,” Mr. Murdoch said. “The framing of that space is like a large-scale embrace, on a scale commensurate of the heroic acts of the people who died there.”

It is the proverbial stone’s throw from where the World Trade Center once stood — when you exit the back door, you gaze over the tiny graveyard and there’s the site of where the (Twin) Towers once mightily rose. When those same buildings came furiously tumbling down, windows from blocks away were blown out by the sheer force of the catastrophe. But the tiny little chapel of St. Paul survived with nary a scratch — not one pane of glass was so much as nicked. Many called it a miracle, and perhaps it is, for today it serves as a living memorial to all that took place on that terrible day in September. Word is a sycamore tree on the northwest corner of the property took the brunt of the aaforce and, in fact, the tree’s root has been preserved in a bronze memorial by sculptor Steve Topi.

This is from a story in The Ottawa Sun: Walking the Grounds of Hope, Tiny Church a Living Testament to a city that stared down terror.

Read all about it at:
ottsun.canoe.ca/News/National/2008/05/04/5464511-sun.html

The New York Times says the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center will not open for at least three years. But on his visit last week, Pope Benedict XVI was able to see — in situ — the largest single exhibit that the museum will offer.
The original slurry wall of the World Trade Center, the left side of which will remain on display in the September 11 museum.
A 62-by-64-foot section of the trade center’s original foundation wall, called a slurry wall, preserved and exposed, will occupy the heart of the enormous West Chamber of the underground museum. This wall section is identifiable because it looks much the way it did seven years ago. It was clearly visible from the spot where the pope blessed ground zero on April 20.

Elsewhere along the slurry wall, steel caisson cores have been erected where a new concrete liner will be poured in front of the old wall. The liner wall system will strengthen the slurry wall against caving in or leaking. Floor slabs in the trade center’s basement once provided that extra bracing. High-strength steel cables, known as tiebacks, do so now.

“We are confident that it is safe at this stage,” said Raymond E. Sandiford, chief geotechnical engineer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is constructing the museum. “But we wouldn’t want to rely on it for 100 years. We have to either line the slurry wall or reinforce the exposed wall so that the loads on it are very minimal.”

The idea of displaying the slurry wall can be traced to a proposal in 2002 by the architect Daniel Libeskind, who was designated master planner of the trade center site. He said then that the walls around the site had “withstood the unimaginable trauma of the destruction and stand as eloquent as the Constitution itself, asserting the durability of democracy and the value of individual life.”

Six years later, the idea has survived.

On the shores of Normandy in France where thousands of Americans died in the cataclysm that was D-day, the Los Angeles Times says a museum that aims to be more than a collection of rusting relics is preparing to commemorate another day that changed the world: Sept. 11, 2001.

“More than 120 mementos, including building keys and a smashed-up vehicle, are being shipped from New York to the French city of Caen for the first exhibition outside the United States, and the largest anywhere on the attack, its roots and aftermath,” according to the press reports.

“That France is playing host to the exhibition might surprise Americans who remember the “freedom fries” uproar that greeted Paris’ opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which the Bush administration tied to its war on terrorism. But the director of the Caen Memorial, a museum of conflict and peace, said the show would have neither an American nor French take on events surrounding Sept. 11, but rather a global view.

“The people who died in those buildings were from 16 countries and every religion,” Director Stephane Grimaldi said. “It was an attack against America. It was an attack against democracy and human rights. We want to tell that story.”

The exhibition, titled “A Global Moment,” is expected to open June 6 at the museum, which was built to remember those who died on that date in 1944 and in the Battle of Normandy that began with the landings.

Grimaldi said that although the relationship between the French and Americans has been complicated by post-Sept. 11 politics in recent years, museums that try to explain the meaning of war are valuable as a way to discuss peace and shared democratic values.

“The American troops’ coming to Normandy to free Europe was a turning point in World War II,” he said during an interview in Paris. “While we still don’t know the historical significance of 9/11, we know it is a turning point and it is time to begin to understand and explore it together.”

Grimaldi said he chose the 9/11 exhibition to mark the 20th anniversary of the French museum because the act of terrorism that day in 2001 is so important to contemporary politics and everyday life around the world.

“The world today is the world of 9/11,” he said, “and our museum is here not to be just another collection of things from the past, of old tanks and helmets, but to understand the world of today that is so marked by terrorism.”

The show is being presented with the New York State Museum in Albany, which has assembled a vast Sept. 11 collection for its permanent exhibition as well as a display that has toured the U.S.

Newsday, the Long Island, New York newspaper says Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Ground Zero last month “highlighted how little progress has been made there since the al-Qaida attack more than six years ago. Images of the World Trade Center site zipped around the globe, revealing that it’s still just a big hole in the ground.

At one time, Americans held hope that this site would come roaring back, proclaiming our determination to stand up to terrorism. Today, it’s more symbolic of New York’s sluggish bureaucracy and political infighting.

In particular, officials are ignoring an opportunity to push ahead with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which reached its $350-million private fundraising goal this month. Instead, the Port Authority, which is responsible for the noncommercial construction at Ground Zero, seems paralyzed behind a budget crisis at the PATH station transportation hub.

What sends a more meaningful message worldwide, a memorial to the victims or a train station? The answer is obvious.

The PATH station is unlikely to be finished by 2011, the 10th anniversary of the attacks. The Freedom Tower might make it. And if the memorial starts right away, it could also meet this symbolically important deadline.

Now is the perfect time for the Port Authority to reset priorities. Gov. David Paterson is expected to name a new executive director, Christopher Ward, to become New York’s representative at the two-state Port Authority. Ward has a record of muscling together divergent interests and moving them forward.

That’s just what Ground Zero needs. The site has been plagued from the start, with former Gov. George Pataki’s indecision, the NYPD’s grandstanding on safety at the Freedom Tower, the fire at the Deutsche Bank building and divisive leadership at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., to name just a few hurdles. Let’s close that chapter and build a site that shows the world a better version of our spirit.”