A Memorial Park For Rockaway
The list of those who have fallen to terrorism at the World Trade Center on September 11 has touched a nerve throughout the peninsula, from Far Rockaway and Bayswater to Breezy Point and onto Broad Channel. The sixty names on the list were sixty too many, and it might well be that there are even more. It is now a time of healing, a time for the community to come together to mourn and memorialize those who fell. Rockaway has a perfect way to do just that. The "Artists Park" planned for the Beach 116 Street triangle of land right on Jamaica Bay must become "Memorial Park" to honor those Rockaway residents. There should now be an open design process so that every Rockaway resident has a chance to put his or her idea for a memorial into the hopper. One suggestion that strikes us as inspiring is to have each of the names etched on a glass block that will catch the sun as it comes up each morning over the bay and over what was once the site of the World Trade Center. We are sure there are other ideas just as creative and just as inspiring. The process must be an open one. That land now belongs not to the city nor to the Chamber of Commerce, nor to the Rockaway Artists Alliance, but to the entire community, to those who fell, to their families and to the ages.
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