1772: "Staten Island Remembers"

0:00On the Staten Island waterfront not far from the ferry terminal at St. George, two white walls rise towards the sky, open towards lower Manhattan. Between them across New York Harbor is the place where the twin towers once stood. This is Postcards, Staten Island's September 11 Memorial. On September 11, 2001, the Staten Island lost 274 people. In a burrow known for close-knit neighborhoods including generations of Italian-American families who helped build New York, so many residents worked for the city or commuted into Manhattan each morning that the loss reached into firehouses, police families, offices, schools, neighborhoods, and ordinary homes across the island. Michael Kamerata, he was 22 years old. He grew up on Staten Island, played in the 1991 Little League World Series, and earned

1:03a perfect score on his FTNY Firefighter exam. He'd only been with the department a few months when he responded to the World Trade Center with latter company 11. He was the youngest of the 343 FTNY members killed that day. Lieutenant Michael Quilty, also of latter 11, he was 42 and already served 20 years with the FTNY. He lived on Staten Island with his wife and two teenagers, and away from the firehouse, he was a licensed pilot, a certified scuba diver, and a man who enjoyed carpentry, kayaking, and fishing. There were also Staten Islanders working inside the towers. Philip Miller, 53 years old, husband and father who ran Marathons, played golf, and worked for A.N. Corporation on the 102nd floor of the South Tower. Alan Jensen, 49, a Staten Island native and vice president at Fadoo Sherry Trust.

2:03He made it out of the World Trade Center during the 1993 bombing. On September 11, he was lost in the South Tower. Four people among 274, each with a family, a history, a job, and people expecting them home. Staten Island built postcards so that individual lives wouldn't disappear simply into a number. It was designed by architect Masayuki Sono and dedicated in 2004. The memorial consists of two soaring white structures about 50 feet, 15 meters. Inside are individual granite plaques measuring 9 by 11 inches, that's about 23 by 28 centimeters. Each bears a person's name, a birthday, and a workplace, along with a silhouette created from a photograph supplied by the family. The profile's face man Hatton. For many families, postcards also became the closest thing that they had to a gravesite.

3:08Former Staten Island borough president James Mollinaro, he estimated that roughly 60 percent of the family's represent that they received no identifiable remains of the person they lost. He called the memorial their cemetery. In September 11, the continued taking Staten Islanders long after that morning. Besides postcards, there's another memorial honoring first responders who died in the years after from illness associated with their exposure during the rescue and recovery work at the World Trade Center. Twenty-five years have passed. The ferry still moves across the harbor. People still stand on its decks looking towards Manhattan and every day Staten Islanders still make that familiar trip back and forth. What had st. George, 274 names remain along the waterfront, each one belonging to a person

4:11whose life was larger than what happened to them on September 11. Their families remember them. Their neighbors remember them. And Staten Island made sure there would always be a place where the rest of us could remember them too. These are interesting things with J.C.