(Photo from Washingtonpost.com)
I post this every year on 9/11, and will continue to bring it back on the anniversary of that horrific day. No, we will never forget:
The memorial in Washington, D.C. for the Pentagon victims of 9/11 as an abstract object represents each person who died at this location in the terrorist act that day. The designers, Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman, have created the memorial with objects, which appear on the lawn as granite benches, which one would normally associate with comfort and relaxation. They also have the appearance of airplane wings, jetting out of the ground. However, the one hundred eighty-four objects, juxtaposed to the lawn outside the Pentagon serves as a reminder of the great loss of life that day. The dedication of this memorial states:
The Pentagon Memorial contains 184 memorial units, each of which is dedicated to an individual victim by its unique placement within the collective field. The field is organized as a timeline of the victims' ages, moving from the youngest, three-year-old Dana Falkenberg to the oldest, John D. Yamnicky, 71.
Each memorial unit is specifically positioned in order to distinguish victims on board American Airlines Flight 77 from victims within the Pentagon. The memorial units representing the 59 lives lost on American Airlines Flight 77 are positioned so that a visitor to the park will face the sky when reading the name of the victim to whom that unit is dedicated. When standing at a memorial unit dedicated to a victim who was inside the Pentagon, the visitor sees the victim's name and the Pentagon in the same view. The simple but elegant memorial units are at once a glowing light pool, a cantilevered bench and a place for permanent inscription of each victim's name.
Through each season, the maple trees' beauty will contribute to the park's atmosphere of peace and remembrance, enhancing each visitor's personal experience of the memorial. (from the Pentagon Memorial website) [1]
The iconic realism of this memorial provides the visitor to this site an opportunity to reflect on the magnitude that this event has had on the culture of the United States of America and the world, in general.
[1] Pentagon September 11 Memorial. 2008. http://www.defenselink.mil/home/features/2008/0708_memorial/memorial.html
