It is human nature to have the courage to prevail in the most trying of times.  There is no greater example of this than September 11, 2001, and it is exactly that image which the Long Island 9/11 memorial hopes to capture.  In the wake of the aftermath, two men, fittingly retired New York City firefighters, have undertaken an extremely ambitious project, one which has its sights set on providing long-awaited recognition for the part that Long Island and its residents played in the aftermath of the tragedy.

The 9/11 Memorial is a project with the purpose to soothe many open wounds that haunt many New York natives.  With the hopes that the proposed memorial will help coping families deal with the struggle of lost loved ones, Robert De Silva, the current president of the 9/11 Memorial project and Ken Dolan, the project’s vice president, brought their humanitarian efforts from their exclusive firefighter organization to the community forefront.

What is your main goal in building this memorial?

De Silva: We’re two retired New York City Firefighters who want to do something for our community so we were looking for ways to address the situation after 9/11.  Kenny and I are both past presidents of the Retired Firefighters of Long Island and we wanted a way to bring some closure to everything after we sent our organization to help in the ground zero cleanup efforts.  We all know how deeply the firefighters were affected by 9/11 and how there wasn’t a member who didn’t feel the sting of the event, so we wanted to find ways to help deal with that and bring a sense of peace to everything.  It wasn’t long until we realized that the firefighters weren’t the only proud ones affected by 9/11, and as proud as we are to be firefighters, we’re equally proud to be Long Islanders.  We decided to broaden the scope of our mission for closure to encompass all of Long Island, everyone who was touched by the event, not just fellow firefighters.  The main thing we were interested in doing with this whole project was to be able to help people:  help people that suffered losses and help people that were on Long Island.

Where does the 9/11 Memorial project stand as of now and what are some of the hurdles you’re facing?

Dolan:  There are so many hurdles involved with raising necessary funds.  Our goal is to have this task pretty well completed in two years.  In order to have that, we need to have the funding to push it forward, to make it an achievable goal.

De Silva:  We’re at the threshold of making this dream a reality, that transition period where we can go, “Alright, we’re here, let’s reach out to the business community and let them know who we are and what we’re doing.”  We need funding, obviously, and it’s a matter of where to look.  It’s a matter of finding that backbone of support to fuel this project, looking to not only business, but also the government to gain some funding, find someone who is willing to get behind this memorial and make it a reality.

What location did you choose for the memorial and whom did you choose to design it?

De Silva:  We took a long, hard look at what we were doing, how this project was meant to be a Long Island project, and we wanted to make it as centralized as possible.  We came up with the idea that Farmingdale University might be an ideal spot for the monument:  it’s a central location covering both Nassau and Suffolk Counties and involves three towns (Babylon, Oyster Bay, and Huntington), which really seemed to fit the bill perfectly for what we were looking for.  As far as the design for the monument, we held a competition through the Architect Institute of America for Long Island architects only (we felt it was a Long Island monument, it should be a Long Island design) and we received numerous applications.  We created a blue ribbon panel to narrow down the field and kept the applicants anonymous to the panel in order to assure a fair competition.  The winning architect was Patricia O’Neil, whose husband was in the buildings during 9/11 and survived.  Her design really reflected the feeling of what should be in this memorial.

What does the design for the memorial include?

De Silva:  The design is extremely intricate and involves Farmingdale’s own building, Cutler Hall.  Patricia’s design tells the entire story from the time the planes took off in Boston all the way to the time when building number seven collapsed.  So when one passes through a corridor in the monument or walks by its serene reflecting pools and gardens, a complete history of what happened that day can be experienced.

Address: P.O.Box 911 Kings Park, NY 11754
President: Robert De Silva/ Vice President: Ken Dolan
Phone: (631) 269-7738
Website: www.li911memorial.org
Founded: 2002
Staff: 13 (unpaid)
Annual Budget: $200,000
Fundraised Budget: $200,000