The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and its approach to families, is a major issue. Think about how fast this is moving forward. Why is this being pushed? Did they steal into Pearl Harbor and have an amusement park there right away? It doesn't seem right to me that it's happening so quickly
The reason the memorial process is moving so quickly is because they're not getting input from everybody. They're getting input from a few select people who are going along with what those in charge want, playing their game. They don't want to hear from families that are unhappy.
They don't want to hear that families don't want a PATH train pulling into the World Trade Center, on top of maybe tiny remains. They don't want to hear that fire families want their brothers listed together, and police families want their brother and sisters listed together. They want to hear what they want to hear, and that's why they shut out the families that don't agree with what they want.
Plain and simply, I want that my brother Sean Tallon be listed with his fellow firemen, that the policemen be listed together, and that each group -- the EMTs, the court officers, the civilians - be given recognition. I really would like to see my brother listed with the firemen he was with that day, because that's the only consolation I got, that Sean was with his fellow firefighters, and I knew he didn't feel alone as he was scared climbing up those stairs. I don't think it's too much to ask, considering all that they gave and all my family gave that day.
If this doesn't happen, I will remove Sean's name from that memorial, or at least fight to have it removed. I would rather stand down at Ground Zero with a piece of oak tag every September 11, with my brother's name and what he did, and tell my little girl in the future 'we didn't let his name up there, because the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation didn't do the right thing.
Rosalen Tallon's brother was a firefighter who died on 9/11. This essay was adapted from an interview.
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Also In This Series
• The Eight 9/11 Memorial Designs
• Rethink The Type Of Memorial We Want - by Max Page
• Let The Memorial Jury Do Its Work - by Charles G. Wolf
• We're Being Shut Out Of The Process - by Rosalen Tallon
The Eight Memorial Finalists
• Votives in Suspension (Norman Lee and Michael Lewis)
• Inversion of Light (Toshio Sasaki)
• Garden of Lights (Pierre David, Sean Corriel, Jessica Kmetovic)
• Suspending Memory (Joseph Karadin, Hsin-Yi Wu)
• Lower Waters (Bradley Campbell, Matthias Neumann)
• Dual Memory (Brian Stawn, Karla Sierralta)
• Passages of Light: The Memorial Cloud (bbc art + architecture)
• Reflecting Absence: A Memorial at the World Trade Center Site (Michael Arad)
