Gardens of Remembrance

by Scott Feldman

Wednesday morning, April 10. As I stepped out of the news car at the Dennison Building in Hauppauge, I couldn't help but thinking how much the day was like that infamous day 7 years before. The air was crisp and clean. The sky, bright blue and virtually cloudless.

News 12 was there to cover the ceremonial groundbreaking of a Suffolk memorial to the 180 county residents who lost their lives on September 11. From the architectural sketch, the memorial looks to be magnificent and a beautiful tribute to those who perished in the terror attack on the World Trade Center. Manhattan architects Barry Silberstrang and Barry David Berger have created an inaccesible wild-growing garden that will be surrounded on four sides by glass panels. Each panel will be inscribed with the name and biographical information about a Trade Center victim along with a holigram portrait. 

In talking to some of the family members gathered where the memorial will be located, the lawn between the Dennison parking lot and Veterans Memorial Highway, it is clear that this memorial will be the place they come to remember their loved ones, not the World Trade Center site where construction has really just begun. Going to Lower Manhattan, they tell me, would be too painful.  Emotionally, it will be easier for them to travel from their home in the county to the Suffolk memorial than trek 50 miles into New York City.

I'm told actual groundbreaking on the Suffolk 9/11 memorial will happen in the next four to six weeks. And Suffolk Executive Steve Levy seems confident it will be completed by next September, the 8th anniversary of the attacks. I look forward to going there. As I'm certain, every other Long Islander will too.