Victim’s father opposes memorial shape

A tower planned for the site was criticized as looking like a minaret on a mosque.

SOMERSET, Pa. (AP) — The father of a Flight 93 victim told two groups working together on a memorial to the victims aboard the hijacked airliner that the memorial’s crescent-shaped design “does not properly honor our people.”

Tom Burnett Sr., of Northfield, Minn., objects because a crescent is commonly used as a symbol of Islam and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were carried out by Muslims who hijacked four airliners. Two crashed into the World Trade Center in New York; a third into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.; Flight 93 crashed in rural Somerset County before reaching the hijackers’ intended target.

“I’ve continued to voice my concerns because it does not properly honor our people, those Flight 93 heroes,” Burnett said Saturday at a meeting of the commission advising the National Park Service on the design.

The meeting just miles from the crash site also included members of the Flight 93 Memorial Task Force. The task force represents relatives of the 40 passengers and crew who died when their struggle with four hijackers caused the plane to nosedive into a field about 60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Burnett said he wants an investigation into how architect Paul Murdoch came up with the design, the centerpiece of which is a crescent of trees that overlooks the crash site. Parks Service officials say the design isn’t a crescent but a circle of embrace broken by the crash site.

Burnett was one of more than a dozen people, mostly family members of the victims, who sometimes wept as they spoke for and against the design.

Park Service officials and the vast majority of family members who like the design say it was fairly and impartially selected out of 1,100 submitted in a national contest. Burnett, who served on a jury that judged the designs, said concerns he raised about the apparent Muslim symbolism were ignored and continue to be downplayed.

But others said Burnett and conservative blogger Alec Rawls, whose Web site highlights the alleged Muslim symbolism, are defeating their own purpose by drawing undue attention to the hijackers. Others spoke out against personal attacks on Joanne Handley, the NPS superintendent who oversees the project and supports its design.

Calvin Wilson of Herndon, Va., said attacks questioning Handley’s patriotism are a form of terrorism. Wilson’s brother, LeRoy Homer, was the co-pilot who died aboard Flight 93.

“None of us should have to defend ourselves as Americans,” Wilson said, near tears. “The fact that we have Americans acting like terrorists is even more disturbing.”

The planned memorial also includes a metal tower from which 40 wind chimes will hang. Burnett and Rawls said the tower is similar to a minaret on a mosque, and that the top of it is crescent shaped, too. Both crescents at the crash site point to the Muslim holy city of Mecca, they said.

“This is a terrorist memorial mosque,” Rawls said of the planned memorial.

David Beamer, father of Todd Beamer whose command of “Let’s roll” signaled the passenger revolt, said he has researched the design and found no fault in it. He addressed Burnett personally at the meeting.

“Our sons Beamer and Burnett and 38 others on that fateful morning were united,” Beamer said. “So I’m sad today to find us on opposite sides.”

The planning groups are in the midst of raising about $22 million for the first phase of the memorial. They hope to open it by the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.