WTC FAMILIES FOR PROPER BURIAL

A Community of 9/11 Families, Friends & Concerned Citterns

LETTERS

WTC: Fresh Kills “My Daddy is not garbage"

We need your support.

I would like to draw your attention to the situation at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island where the ashen remains of our neighbors, friends and loved ones remain to this day, sixteen months after September 11th, 2001.

There are no plans to move our friends and loved ones remains to a more dignified resting place and members of New York’s leadership have refused to acknowledge the need to do so. In fact, Governor Pataki has decided that this is a local matter and Mayor Bloomberg’s office has denied that there is a need and has refused to even discuss this issue with the families.

In the last sixteen months, holidays, birthdays and anniversaries have come and gone, for many, more then once and yet for most friends and family members there is no grave to visit, no memorial to provide comfort.

Therefore, members of the September 11th families and the local community have come together to form “WTC Families for Proper Burial” whose sole mission is to provide that final dignified resting place for all those we lost.

To assist us, an online petition has been created and as of today’s date, we have nearly 5,000 signatures, I hope you will add yours.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/WTCASHES/

We need your support on this matter. Please assist us in honoring the memory and preserving the dignity of all those brave and innocent souls we lost on September 11th, 2001 by helping us to insure that they are provided with a final resting place worthy of their sacrifice.

Please take a moment to sign the petition above and pass this message along. Don’t let America’s greatest tragedy become America’s greatest disgrace.

Daryl J Meehan
Barnegat, NJ

Daily News August 14,2004

Rest in peace
Pearl River, N.Y.: Last Saturday, the good people of the Department of Sanitation provided a respectful funeral for Destiny, a baby whose body they found in the trash. Destiny deserved a dignified and proper burial. All people do. It's time to remove the ashen remains of the World Trade Center victims from the Fresh Kills landfill. It is the right thing to do.

Joyce Woods

A Home News Tribune Opinion

Letter of the Week Sunday Feb 22 2004

A Sept 11 QUESTION:

Who Owns The Dead

   Of all the questions, debates, and issues which have arisen since the events of September 11,2001, the single issue which remains unanswered is who owns the dead. and how did their ashen remains, bone fragments, and decaying tissue become one with the hills known as hills one and nine at the Fresh Kills land fill on Staten Island.

        There is a clear distinction between the effort of identification, to determine who perished at the World Trade Center, and what has been done to provide for a proper burial of any and all of the remains.

     No will deny the efforts of all those involved in the recovery effort to secure the identification of those who perished. But the city of New York, which would rather build schools then a memorial, which does not wish to look to the past and but now only seeks to look to a brighter economic future. This City has chosen to bull doze the ashen remains of those lost, and declare that their final interment as the landfill, an un-consecrated land mass. This Land fill which is visible from space, which will become part of the grander scheme to give back to the people of Staten Island a park for their future generations to enjoy, will contain the cemetery the city seeks to deny. The city officials who have been asked to respond to the simple question of how and why did this happen, remain as silent as the hills where the remains are covered with fill, garbage below and on top of the ashen remains. A freedom of information request has gone unanswered by the mayor's office, their official response," we have no records", strange as it seems for a crime scene investigation, the largest in history of this country.

And of course, there is the inevitable question that even if the city wanted to do something, they cannot bear the cost in these economic times, disregarding the millions which were sent from Washington, specifically for the effort at Fresh Kills and paid to the sanitation department, surely those who voted for and enacted these funds expected the families to be given back their loved ones remains, and a proper burial for all. While those lost in the attack on the Pentagon, and those who gave their lives in PA, have been laid to rest, with a proper burial.

And finally there is the question of why is there no outcry from across this country, that their fellow Americans who died on September 11,2001 lie in two hills known as one and nine, where families must seek permission from the Sanitation department of New York to visit, and be escorted to those hills, and the press is denied access.

Thomas J. Meehan III   Carteret New Jersey (Colleen Ann Meehan Barkow the letter writer’s daughter was killed in the attack on the WTC on September 11,2001)