Closed 9/11 Memorial Continues to Place White Roses on Victims’ Names on Their Birthdays

Staff at the closed 9/11 Memorial are continuing to honor the dead on their birthdays by placing white roses on their names, despite the coronavirus pandemic.

“Being able to demonstrate that we don’t forget, we don’t forget that these lives were individual people with families and hobbies and careers, challenges, they were people like us who were killed on 9/11, and it’s people like us who are dying every day from this horrible pandemic,” Alice Greenwald, the President & CEO of National September 11 Memorial and Museum, told Spectrum NY 1 News.

The idea of preserving memories is critical to the 9/11 Memorial’s mission, and it is why the tradition is continuing even as its doors are closed to the public.

The team of people includes a florist who has been donating the flowers since the tradition started seven years ago.

Since the public, including relatives of the victims, are prohibited from visiting the memorial temporarily, the organization has been taking pictures of the names with the flowers and sending them to family members who request them.

David Sheehan, the organization’s chief financial officer, performed the task one morning last month, and now that task has been relegated to the security guards.

“It was interesting, I was sought of placing the names on the roses, and I was looking out at the empty memorial plaza that is usually filled with thousands of people,” said Sheehan. I wound up feeling a tremendous amount of pride at the thought that I was able to be part of a team of people that were going to be able to keep this very important tradition alive.”