Zero Respect At Ground Zero

I wanted to give my fiance, who had never been in NYC before a quick tour of Manhattan before we finished packing up my home and moving halfway across the country.

One of the places we wanted to go to was the 9/11 Memorial. I passed it daily on my way to and from work, and had never gone. Having vivid memories of that day, and knowing people who had been killed in the Towers, it was a somber self-guided tour. There is a room that has small plaques of each victim that light up and a short announcement made of the person’s name, where they were from. There had been eight people from my tiny hometown village killed, including one of our councilmen. I wept, not just there, but in several other areas.

My emotions were raw, and flashbacks to that day were hitting. We entered a large room where there were mangled fire trucks, police cars, rescue vehicles, etc. Most had scorch marks, interiors grey with ash, etc. They were all behind rope barriers, with multi-language signs saying ‘Do Not Touch.’

Ahead of us was a tall man with a small six-or-seven-year-old child, appearing to be father and son. The child scampered off ahead of the father, ducked under one of the ropes surrounding a mangled police car – a door was missing, the front hood caved in, and the trunk popped open. The child climbed right onto the car, and started playing on it like it was a playground jungle gym.

The father not only didn’t say anything, but encouraged his son, and started taking photos. They were talking and laughing with each other in some European-sounding language. I wanted to smack the father, but my fiance dragged me out of there and found a security guard to go extract them out of that room (hopefully out of the Museum altogether).

I was appalled at the disrespect shown to the memories of the 2736 people killed at that very spot.