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Jan 25, 2007 8:45 am US/Eastern
9/11 Memorial Dispute Takes To Airwaves
by Magee Hickey
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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A man scrawls a message on a poster remembering the fallen of 9/11 at a makeshift memorial in 2001. (File photo)
Gregg Geller
Victims' families angry over plans for a 9/11 memorial are officially taking their fight to the airwaves. A 60-second national television ad began airing Thursday morning that calls for changes to the way victims' names will be listed at the sacred site.
The emotional ad is set to the music of a moving cello solo.
The ad mixes images of the missing persons posters that family members created for their loved ones in the days after the attacks with words that call the latest proposal to list the dead "a cold, random list of names."
Specifically, family members and the police and fire unions don't like the listing of the names of the dead in random order on stone parapets around two reflecting pools marking the Twin Towers' footprints.
The names of the dead would be displayed with no mention of age, or in the case of first responders, of company or rank.
Family members are unhappy that this information could be absent from the memorial.
Michael Burke lost his brother, FDNY Captain William Burke. "It causes a lot of unnecessary anguish for family members," he said.
Edith Lutnick's brother Gary was one of more than 650 Canter-Fitzgerald employees who died on 9/11.
"Fifty years from now or 100 years from now if all this Memorial conveys to you is that a bunch of people died then the message is going to be lost," she said.
Neither the mayor's office nor the foundation behind the memorial has commented on the national ad campaign.
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