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NEW YORK (AP) - The Sept. 11 memorial will list the names of the dead according to the World Trade Center tower where they died, the company where they worked, or the plane they were on, a change from the random listing envisioned by the memorial's designer, officials said Wednesday.
The new arrangement announced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg was supported by the memorial architect but outraged Sept. 11 family members who wanted to list their loved ones' ages, the floor they worked on at the trade center and the ranks of fire and police officials who rushed into the buildings.
"The question of how the names are listed evokes strong feeling and convictions from relatives, colleagues and friends of those we lost," said Bloomberg, the chairman of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. "I have spent a lot of time listening to everyone's views on the subject, and there is no right answer. Nevertheless, it is time to move forward."
The designer of the "Reflecting Absence" memorial, Michael Arad, who originally proposed listing the names of the nearly 3,000 victims in random order to reflect the chaos of Sept. 11, said the new proposal "preserves the equality of all victims while honoring the selfless sacrifice of the first responders."
"This allows us to place the names of those who died that day next to each other in a meaningful way, marking the names of family and friends together, as they had lived and died," Arad said.
The proposal was approved by the foundation's executive committee. Foundation officials said no full board approval would be necessary.
The president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, which represents city firefighters, said the union was pleased with the announcement.
"The UFA has been lobbying for these changes for close to two years, and in the end this is what we needed to have happen," Steve Cassidy said. "This bodes well for the memorial moving forward and fundraising for it."
Edie Lutnick, who has led a group of families and fire and police unions that pushed to group their loved ones together and list details like their age and company, said the new arrangement is unacceptable and shouldn't be decided by the mayor.
"Why is it his decision? It shouldn't be his decision to make. It should be the decision of the families ... how the names of their loved ones are listed in their final resting place," said Lutnick, whose brother, Gary, was one of 658 people killed from the Cantor Fitzgerald bond brokerage.
The new arrangement includes 10 groupings of names of the 2,979 people killed on Sept. 11, and in the 1993 trade center bombing.
The names of civilians who died in the north tower and aboard the hijacked jetliner that crashed into it will be listed on a parapet surrounding a reflecting pool marking the north tower's footprint.
The names of the victims in the south tower will be listed around the south tower's footprint, along with the rescue workers killed in both towers, victims on the flights that crashed into the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa., and the people who died in the 1993 bombing.
The names of the four flights, the 1993 bombing and different fire engine companies will be listed, but not the private companies where about 2,000 of the victims worked. The victims who worked for the unnamed companies, however, will be grouped together.
Foundation president Joseph Daniels said families could request that family members who died together on a plane or in a building be listed together.
Daniels called the change "a compromise" that respects those who died by listing them together but maintains Arad's original idea of having names that appear random.
The foundation also announced that it had privately raised $202 million of a $300 million goal to help build the Sept. 11 memorial, which has been under construction since the spring. The figure represents a 40 percent increase in the two months that Bloomberg has been the foundation's chairman.
It hired Cathy Blaney, a Republican fundraiser who has worked for Gov. George Pataki, the Republican National Committee and President Bush, to head future fundraising efforts. Blaney, Pataki's chief fundraiser, will join the foundation next month.
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