Funding a memorial

Washington Post: One blistering hot day last summer, Kelsey Donovan, a rising sixth-grader at Waynewood Elementary School in Alexandria, Va., set out for the Mount Vernon Trail bike path equipped with some Gatorade and a good cause. Her goal was to raise money for the Pentagon Memorial for the victims of Sept. 11, one of whom was her father, Navy Cmdr. Bill Donovan. Kelsey had a big day -- she took in about $450 from Gatorade sales. And at Christmas she collected $1,000 from a bake sale she organized at school. Cmdr. Donovan would be very proud.
The memorial, which is being privately financed, will be the Washington area's main tribute to the 184 people who perished that day in 2001 when terrorists commandeered American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon. A tree-shaded park of two acres on the Pentagon's west lawn, it will feature 184 cantilevered benches, one dedicated to each victim. Each bench will overhang its own small, illuminated reflecting pool -- a quiet, dignified space of reflection and remembrance for a national tragedy whose pain remains intensely personal for the Donovans and thousands of other families who lost loved ones.
Major donors
Fund raising for the memorial is under way in earnest. The estimated cost of construction is about $18 million, of which $6 million has been raised so far, including Kelsey Donovan's share. Pentagon employees have chipped in roughly $500,000, of which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his wife, Joyce, gave $100,000. Other major donors include Anheuser-Busch Cos., which contributed $1 million; the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which gave $500,000; and defense contractors Raytheon Co., Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., which have made major donations.
It would be fitting if Washingtonians, Virginians and Marylanders pitched in to help get the memorial built, and to help endow a maintenance fund, estimated to need $10 million, for it thereafter. Of the 184 people killed at the Pentagon and aboard Flight 77, 125 were from this area -- 69 lived in Virginia, 41 in Maryland and 15 in the District.