In a quiet, wooded suburb outside Washington, DC, scientists and engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have been carefully and systematically analyzing steel remnants from the World Trade Center buildings to assess their structural integrity in the aftermath of the disaster of September 11, 2001. Monumental pieces of steel lie in the NIST yards and testing facilities, twisted into shapes of terrible beauty, challenging our ability to comprehend what we are seeing. Helping to orient visitors to what they are witnessing, the staff displays an enlarged photo-panel with a vivid image captured that crisp, clear morning. Looking from the steel in the NIST yard to the photograph and then back to the steel, one clearly sees the exact point of the jet’s entry, only moments after impact, the steel in its bent-back distortion testifying powerfully to the first, cataclysmic wound inflicted upon the World Trade Center that fateful day.

But, then, almost involuntarily, the eye locks in on another, more intimate drama captured in that picture. Standing but feet from the gaping wound is a tiny figure: a young woman, blond-haired, slight of build, still wearing her white summer trousers on that early September morning. She is standing, literally, at the precipice of raw horror and certain death. She is alone, at the edge of the abyss. And, those of us who came to look at fascinating distortions of steel have now been silenced and humbled and reminded of what’s at stake. That tiny figure was someone’s daughter, sister, friend, fiancée, mother, colleague. She could have been any of us.

The museum at Ground Zero has the potential to educate and inspire with great power and authenticity. The museum will provide the visiting public with access to the slurry wall and box beam column remnants that have been designated as historic assets. The museum will incorporate, dramatically and with sensitivity, the extraordinary monumental artifacts associated with the events of 9/11, while at the same time presenting the intimate stories of loss, compassion, and recovery that are so much a part of this collective legacy of trauma. And most importantly, the museum will facilitate the individual and communal grieving process, allowing memory to evoke a sense of common purpose catalyzing our understanding of what it means to be human, and what it means to live in a global community at the start of the 21st century.

The imperative to create the National September 11 Memorial Museum reflects a fervent belief in the transformative power of memory. First and foremost, the focus of this project will be to remember the victims of the attack and to honor those who went to their rescue. As the custodian of the memory of those who perished here, the Museum will take on the mantle of moral authority that will define its continuing and evolving role. It will do nothing less than underscore the absolute illegitimacy of indiscriminate murder. It will help us to honor the memory of that young woman standing at the edge of the abyss, affirming her life, and inspiring us all to build a world in which what should have been a typical day at work does not become instead a cataclysm of unimaginable horror and loss.

Alice M. Greenwald

Executive Vice President for Programs
Director of the National September 11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center