There was a design competition for the Memorial that ended up on the site of the plane crash. The victims’ families had agreed that site was where the Memorial would be. But what should it look like? It was an open field.
Many of us remember when Maya Lin suggested a wall be carved into a berm at the site of the Vietnam War Memorial. There were many skeptics, but it is now one of the most respected memorials in Washington. I could not stop crying the first time I visited. Or the second or the third.
A last minute entry from a New York couple won the design award. It consisted of one bench for each victim, inside the Pentagon and on the airplane. The direction that the bench faces indicates whether the person was on the plane or in the building. The benches are arranged according to the age of the victim. The first bench when you enter the site is for the youngest person. To find a victim’s bench, you walk along the outside path until you find their year of birth and turn down that path. Names are etched in the front facing part of each bench. Each bench sits over a stream of moving water. Each bench has a tree planted alongside. They were saplings in 2008. Now they are mature trees. There are 184 benches.
There are many videos that you can watch about the creation and construction of the Memorial and its challenges. It’s a brilliant design. Below are images from the Memorial Dedication Day.
From left to right: Me, Joanie Graves, Gary Rubens, Chris Fisher, Bert Harold and Linda Rubens.
