17 families of 9/11 victims have filed a legal appeal demanding the names and addresses of other victims' families, in an attempt to settle an intense dispute over the unidentified remains from the attack on the World Trade Center. Some of the families object to the current plan to keep the remains in the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, underground behind a wall and a quotation by Virgil: "No day shall erase you from the memory of time." The plaintiffs assert that it would be "disrespectful" to keep the remains in what they see as a tourist attraction.
The lawsuit seeks the names and addresses in order to poll everyone on how the victims should be honored. Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches tells Newsday, "The city has the list and we want all the families to decide where is a place of dignity where the dead can be honored, and that reminds us about what happened that day—not T-shirts and coffee cups sold at a museum shop." And Sally Regenhard, whose son Christian Regenhard was an FDNY probationary firefighter who died on 9/11, adds, "The bottom line is that we were told the remains would be interred in a distinct and separate place from any visitor center or museum. I know that because I helped write it."
Under the current plan, family members would be able schedule appointments outside museum hours, access the remains via a separate viewing area, and would not be charged a museum fee. Officials with the long-delayed Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum insists it notified family members in 2002 about plans to place the "repository for the remains at bedrock" between the Twin Tower footprints and there was "overwhelming support." But Riches tells NY1, "We've had no say in it, so we want names and addresses of the family members to poll all the families, so that all families have a say. Go with the democratic way, go with the choice of the people, which we feel will be like 95 percent to move it above grade."
Last year a judge ruled that it would be an invasion of privacy to release the families' names and addresses. In addition to demanding that information, the appeal filed yesterday seeks the unidentified remains "placed in a respectful and accessible location separate from the museum and above ground."
