By Anthony Rifilato
Nevertheless, they have to at least make people aware, she said, that the area that was once the footprints of the Twin Towers is not being fully preserved for a memorial site.
"Governor Pataki promised never to build on the footprints," said McAleese, who lost her son Brian, a Baldwin resident and New York City firefighter, in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "It's criminal. That is sacred ground."
Last week, McAleese was one of many victims' family members who protested part of the rebuilding plan at ground zero, where they risked arrest by attempting to block construction vehicles from entering the site.
"It was very surprising," McAleese said. "They locked the gates so we couldn't get in."
The issue is not the entire redevelopment plan, they said, but the infrastructure that includes and surrounds the footprints. McAleese and others maintain that a 9 1/2-acre area should be preserved for a memorial, beginning 70 feet below street level. Current plans, however, include 4 1/2 acres for a memorial, and its floor would be raised by 40 feet for engineering purposes. Work has already begun on a new commuter train station, and a planned museum included in architect Daniel Libeskind's winning design for the Trade Center site would cross one of the footprints.
Until last week, McAleese had never taken to the streets to fight for her views. Her son's remains have never been recovered, and rebuilding over the footprints would be a promise broken by state and local officials overseeing redevelopment of lower Manhattan, she said.
"If the LMDC gets what is wants, we'll never be able to walk down there," McAleese said of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the state-controlled and federally financed agency charged with overseeing the project.
Every Thursday for the past two years, McAleese has attended a bereavement group, called the Freeport Parents Group, where she meets with other parents of lost firefighters. Last Thursday, McAleese said the group would light candles and release balloons as part of a memorial. They even brought along some of their sons' favorite foods. McAleese brought Brian's favorite, Haagen Daazs mint chocolate chip ice cream.
McAleese's response to the rebuilding under way at the Trade Center reflects the mood and the struggle of many who lost loved ones in the attacks and feel that the site is a place for mourning rather than just a valuable piece of real estate. Just last month it was announced that part of the memorial will contain the unidentified remains of more than 1,000 victims of the attacks.
"I really don't think that they listened to the families," Megan McCourt said of the LMDC. McCourt, of Baldwin, lost her boyfriend, Mario Nardone, who worked on the 84th floor of Tower Two at the financial firm EuroBrokers.
In 2002, McCourt embarked on a 100-mile bike ride in Lake Tahoe to honor Nardone and raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Nardone had completed the ride in 2000, and the couple had planned to ride together in 2002.
Although McCourt said it is still too difficult for her to be at Ground Zero, she agrees that the footprints should be preserved, and is writing letters to Governor Pataki and President Bush protesting the rebuilding. Nardone's remains, like McAleese's, were never recovered.
"I don't have anything of Mario," McCourt said. "I understand the need for redevelopment, but you don't need another Gap and Banana Republic there."
Some victim's families are also opposed to plans for a museum or other institutions to be built on the footprints.
"I thought it was agreed that the footprints would be held sacred," said Baldwin resident Margie Sivin-Miller, whose husband Joel was killed at the Trade Center. "This is truly their grave."
For the past 10 months, Miller has worked as a family outreach coordinator at the World Trade Center Family Program in Rockville Centre, which is part of South Nassau Communities Hospital. Miller said she understands the need to rebuild lower Manhattan, and even acknowledged that some Battery Park City residents don't want what would essentially be a gigantic cemetery in their neighborhood. Yet, this is where nearly 3,000 people were killed, a reality, she said, that cannot be ignored. Like McAleese, Miller likened the site to Pearl Harbor.
"It is a cemetery," Miller said. "They can't act like it doesn't exist."
With 5,200 entries for a memorial design currently being reviewed, the debate over how to memorialize the victims continues.
"When I'm ready to go [to Ground Zero], I don't want to see things on top of there," McCourt said. "I want to see a proper memorial."
