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'Did you enjoy having drinks on top of my brother's grave?' Sister of WTC victim lashes out at 9/11 Memorial cocktail party guests
mountaineer:
'You should all be ashamed of yourselves': Sister of dead 9/11 responder slams museum officials for hosting cocktail party
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum hosted a black-tie, invite-only affair Tuesday night. Among the swanky attendants were former Mayor Bloomberg and Condé Nast honchos. Family members of Sept. 11, 2001, victims are appalled anyone would celebrate on sacred ground.
BY Edgar Sandoval , Dan Friedman , Rich Schapiro /
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS /
Published: Wednesday, May 21, 2014, 12:28 PM
/ Updated: Thursday, May 22, 2014, 5:38 AM
--- Quote ---Anger seeped from her fingertips after learning that a bunch of VIPs partied and sipped fine wine on the sacred grounds of the 9/11 Museum, where her brother’s remains are buried.
“You enjoy dinner & drinks on top of my brothers grave last night douchebags?” tweeted Robert Shay Jr.’s sister.
Shay, 27, of Staten Island, was a husband, a father and a bond broker for Cantor Fitzgerald.
His outraged sister blasted Condé Nast, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum for the sickening black-tie shindig meant to recognize supporters and donors.
“You should all be ashamed of yourselves,” the sister posted.
The woman’s disgust was shared by dozens of visitors attending Wednesday’s public opening of the museum — including a group of first responders who had been turned away the day before as staff set up for the party.
“You don’t have cocktail parties at a cemetery,” fumed Joe Kisonas, 54, a retired FDNY fire marshal from Rockland County.
Kisonas and two of his retired first-responder buddies were confused when a museum staffer denied them entry at 5 p.m. Tuesday, saying “they were closing to clean.”
“They lied to us,” said Kisonas, of Rockland County. “Just tell us they are having a gathering.”
Kisonas’ pal, Matt Degennaro, a retired NYPD officer, said they waited until the last day of the museum’s free preview for 9/11 ...
--- End quote ---
Rest of story and photos at New York Daily News
mountaineer:
Meanwhile ...
--- Quote ---9/11 museum’s planned ‘comfort food’ cafe is inappropriate
By Steve Cuozzo
New York Post
May 22, 2014 | 5:09am
If the National September 11 Memorial & Museum gets you down — all those unbearable, last-words-to-loved-ones recordings, bloodied shoes and falling-body images — get over it with “comfort food,” seasonal farm products and locally made booze.
The just-opened museum unflinchingly, unforgettably, enshrines the horror of 9/11 for future generations. But the message sent by plans for a café on top of the horrific artifacts is: Never forget . . . to pig out!
This summer, Danny Meyer’s Union Square Events is to open an 80-seat Pavilion Cafe inside the museum.
When I read that it would have “New York-made draft beers and American wines on tap,” I thought I’d had a few too many myself.
The great restaurateur promises a “soothing” experience, modeled on the “contemplative” spirit of a tea room.
Whew!
But the brains behind the museum apparently regard their cathartic masterpiece as just another cultural venue like MoMA or the Whitney, where Meyer also runs restaurants.
I can go for tomato soup and grilled cheese after staring at Picassos for a few hours. My appetite isn’t the same after a tour through hell.
Memorial/museum president Joe Daniels argues that such solemn sites as Gettysburg and Israel’s Yad Vashem have restaurants, too.
But Gettysburg was fought 151 years ago, and Yad Vashem is not at the site where the Holocaust took place. The 9/11 Museum is where the terrorist attack took place a mere 13 years ago — and where remains of 1,115 unidentified victims are stored.
“We’re not doing this for crass or commercial reasons,” Meyer told me. In fact, the cafe is supposed to make money, although Meyer says it will pay the museum a “significantly above-market” rent and a percentage of proceeds, but, “We’re not at liberty” to discuss terms.
But the issue isn’t just profit. A gift shop selling tacky Twin Towers tchotchkes is inappropriate enough. A bar and grill by any name on top of burnt fire trucks and human ashes is just plain gross.
--- End quote ---
mountaineer:
Denis Hamill: Would they have partied if their relatives were among the dead? The 9/11 Museum is not the 40/40 Club, it is no place to party
The 'VIPs' who thought it was a good idea to drink wine above the human remains of 9/11 victims should be ashamed.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS /Thursday, May 22, 2014, 12:11 AM
--- Quote ---For shame.
Would they party if their relatives were among the 1,115 dead whose remains were downstairs?
That’s the question for the people who sipped bubbly and nibbled crab cakes at the black-tie, invitation-only party at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on Tuesday.
If the unidentified remains of your son, daughter, brother, sister, mother, father, wife or husband, friend or loved one were entombed in the subbasement at Ground Zero, would you be drinking wine and eating shrimp cocktail in the lobby of a museum dedicated to the darkest day in the history of New York City?
I don’t think so.
To start with, the most moving part of the museum is that it makes you feel that all those who died were part of the family of New York. The footage of the ordinary guys and gals arriving for work at the 110-story towers on that ordinary Tuesday morning, not knowing it could be their last morning on Earth, is what gives this museum its extraordinary power. I didn’t see any of them in black tie or evening gowns .
This is a celebration of the hardworking New Yorkers who went to the World Trade Center to support themselves and their families, to save for dreams not yet realized, and then were obliterated by a collection of religious fanatics in a monstrous act of mass murder.
When you see the beautiful faces on the posters of the missing, you see the faces of the City of New York. They could have been any of us.
The dead belonged to all of us because the terrorist attacks were not just against the people in the towers. The terrorists had struck every New Yorker. And Ground Zero became a bottomless hole in our collective heart.
We all mourned. We all cried. The whole city fell silent when the bagpipes wailed and names of the dead were read at Ground Zero.
It sure didn’t read like a VIP list.
I felt that same reverent, respectful, inclusive sorrow when I walked through the 9/11 museum last week, seeing again the footage of the planes hitting the towers, the artifacts of the dead and the survivors, the celebration of heroes like FDNY Capt. Paddy Brown and NYPD Officer Moira Smith , who almost certainly knew that this would be their final tour as they kept working to save the innocent as the towers teetered.
Neither was dressed in formal attire that terrible day.
No, they wore the rugged uniforms of first responders like the ones turned away from the museum Tuesday so staff could prepare for the VIP party.
Walking through the museum, I thought of working-class victims I knew like receptionist Peggy Conner, big sister of my grammar school pal Kevin Burns, who perished in a Cantor Fitzgerald office.
“I find it ghoulish and insane to have a party over the remains of the 9/11 dead like my sister,” said Burns, a Vietnam vet. “The museum has a VIP list drinking wine. Meanwhile, my other sister, Pat Cuozzo, almost got arrested on the day the museum opened because she refused to pay admission to add a photo of my lost sister to the memorial wall. It’s a disgrace.”
The museum works because it is a celebration of ordinary New Yorkers who died on 9/11, the common people who could have been any of us. When I left the museum I felt a lot of swirling emotions. The last thing I felt like was partying.
To learn that this dignified shrine was turned into a lounge with a guest list of big shots who came to party above the remains of the unidentified dead made me realize that some people think they are even more important than the fallen of 9/11.
Get it straight: The 9/11 museum is not the 40/40 Club or a movie premiere or a gallery opening. This is a shrine dedicated to the memory of the common people who died in an unspeakable act of war on America.
And just as you don’t throw a barbecue on the field at Gettysburg and you don’t booze cruise next to the warship Arizona, you do not sip wine and yuk it up with other “VIPs” at a museum honoring the 9/11 dead.
For shame.
--- End quote ---
massadvj:
If I was Robert Shay and I had died on 9/11 I think I would want my sister to go on with her life and not obsess over my memory. I would also want life to go on, and since schmoozing parties among elites are a part of life, they should happen as well. Memorials and funerals are for the living. The living should use the event to accommodate their needs, not the needs of the dead.
I am no fan of NYC elitist liberals, but come on. Using one's dead brother to hurl insults and score political points is too much.
DCPatriot:
--- Quote from: massadvj on May 22, 2014, 11:50:36 am ---If I was Robert Shay and I had died on 9/11 I think I would want my sister to go on with her life and not obsess over my memory. I would also want life to go on, and since schmoozing parties among elites are a part of life, they should happen as well. Memorials and funerals are for the living. The living should use the event to accommodate their needs, not the needs of the dead.
I am no fan of NYC elitist liberals, but come on. Using one's dead brother to hurl insults and score political points is too much.
--- End quote ---
Excuse me?
How about you go and open up a bottle of wine at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and see what happens to you.
Maybe you've been dulled by the passage of time, sir, but not me.
Rent a god-damned hotel conference room up the street for your 'celebration. The WTC site should be off-limits.
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