9/11 museum to feature tributes to victims

NEW YORK - Audiovisual tributes to the thousands of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks - accompanied by stories from their lives - will form the core of the 9/11 memorial museum, officials announced yesterday.

Victims' families have been asked to share materials for the underground exhibit within the footprint of the World Trade Center's South Tower. They also must confirm the accuracy of the names to be inscribed around two aboveground memorial pools, surrounded by a park.

"The key to this part of the museum is participation by friends and families of the victims," said Joseph C. Daniels, president and chief executive of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. "We're asking them to leave us recordings and images or remembrances of those they lost."

Through a new telephone initiative - "Call to Remember" - relatives and friends are being asked "to pick up the phone and spend time reflecting on those they lost," Daniels said. More than 3,000 packets announcing the effort have been mailed.

The resulting materials will be at the core of tributes to the victims, including names and photos flashed on a wall of the museum 70 feet underground.

In an adjacent mini-theater, visitors will view continuous movies, images, and narration commemorating each of the more than 2,900 victims of 9/11.

Visitors wishing to see individual tributes to loved ones will be accommodated.

Those remembered will include not only those who died on 9/11 at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and aboard the four hijacked planes, but also victims of the 1993 trade center bombing.

The memorial is expected to open by the 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks, and the museum a year later.

More on the memorial via http://go.philly.com/ sept11memorial EndText