Interview with Madelyn Wils

This transcript is based on videotaped interviews conducted by Great Projects Film Company for the documentary "America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero," and has been edited lightly for readability. The interviewer's questions have not been included; the interviewee's initials indicate where answers to questions begin.

Madelyn Wils (MW): On Friday night, we had a meeting about a temporary memorial. At that point, it had been pretty well determined that the only way to get a temporary memorial up for the victims' families by March 11th, which is the six month anniversary, would be to use a park that already existed. The park is probably less than a hundred feet from the victims' families' platform where they get to go in and view the site. It was for me a very uncomfortable decision because although I was somewhat engaged in making that decision, it was not the place that I would have chosen. But there were never very good choices because with all the destruction around and all the rebuilding of the MTA and the Port Authority staging areas, we really didn't have more than two or three choices. I believe it was the mayor who decided to use the sphere and that came from some members of the victims' families. The sphere weighs forty-five thousand pounds so you couldn't put it very many places. You had to make sure it was either on the relieving platform. Everything west of Greenwich Street is landfill. So you can't just put it anywhere. You have to make sure that it's engineered properly. While doing this in a week and a half is a major feat that had all the Port Authority engineers engaged because this decision was made to use this sphere for March 11th instead of something else temporarily. So I negotiated with the parties that be that if they had to use this space instead of being a temporary memorial, it would be a temporary memorial and we would keep it there for no more than two months. And on March 12th, we would begin to look for a more permanent space for it. I wasn't happy with this but it seemed the best that could be. And frankly, for the people at Battery Park City and Gateway Plaza, the most unfortunate part is that this sphere was supposed to go next to the largest residential building that was damaged the most. Half the people moved out and half of those people won't be back till May and the whole front of that building was blown off. So these people are the most vulnerable. It was just a very uncomfortable situation. I felt very at odds with trying to sell it to the community. I had spent the night before with the victims' families. So spending two nights in a row, one with the victims' families and then one with the survivors, it was very difficult because truly they have so many things in common. I mean, everybody is suffering. Everybody is emotionally drained and very vulnerable and everyone's suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. I think that in terms of the administration, there's a tendency obviously because the victims' families have lost someone, to really want to make sure that they're happy. And there's less of an interest to make sure that the survivors are happy, if one was to make a choice between the two. Now that's a very unfortunate choice to make obviously and one that I don't think should be made because I don't think that a lot of people really understand that most of these people lived through the morning of September 11th. Many of them almost died. Many of them saw their neighbors die. They lost their homes. They lost their businesses. I mean, we were all affected that way. I don't think that there's a lot of understanding about what people actually went through that morning and then have to live through now in trying to pull their pieces back together. So I was really thrilled that the mayor called me five minutes before the meeting and told me that he really felt that that even if it was temporary, temporary, the memorial should be open to the public. I explained that it really couldn't be open to the public because of where it was and what was going on with the residents. So then he suggested, why don't we put the sphere in Battery Park? Now Battery Park was a suggestion I made over a month ago but because of the distance from the World Trade Center site, they didn't think the victims' families would want to have it there. However, now the mayor is going to give them a floor in an empty building that overlooks the site so they can light candles and that they can sit quietly and that they can have their own indoor viewing platform, so to speak, close to the site and then the sphere would be more of a public memorial that would be in Battery Park. The question is whether we can find a site and get it engineered in time to put it there. Hopefully, I'll get a call tomorrow night from the mayor that that's what's happening.

MW: Making a decision that involves any land use or any use of a community without community input, can always be a problem. This administration, which is two months old, has shown more interest in the community than any past administration since I've been around. I'm very pleased that there's so much interest from the administration on what goes on down here. And yes, I do think certainly that a more coordinated effort in terms of not necessarily what they're using but where they're using it can be a problem. I think it's very important that if the victims' families choose an element that they would like to use then that's okay. If that makes them feel good, if they feel that it satisfies their needs, that's fine. But I believe it should be the community that makes the choice of where something should go.

MW: I think that as we go forward with this temporary memorial and then the more permanent memorial, which is going to be obviously a much larger issue, that it's very, very important. I learned something by spending one night with the victims' families and then one night as I always do with the survivors. That is that we have so much in common and that if we all spent more time together understanding what our issues are, I think that we have much more common denominators than one might have thought. When Liz said the other night that the victims of the World Trade Center are now permanent members of our community, it's something that has been said before that we believe. I certainly believe that because these families now have their loved ones' final burial ground just a few blocks from here. They will always be here in spirit whether their bodies are gone or not. This is their final resting place. I do think that we have to embrace them as part of our community and their families as well. If there's a better understanding of how we all need to live and go forward, then I think we're going to reach a much more unanimous decision when it comes time to make these very important decisions about where to site the memorial, how to proceed, who gets involved and all of those kinds of decisions.

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