A tribute is a service or object to show respect or gratitude to a person or group of people.

It is a representation.

That being said, apparently some people in New York City don’t seem to understand it.
A statue, “Flag Raising at Ground Zero,” has been criticized as an attempt to be politically correct instead of historical. They are upset because the photo that the statue is based on pictures three white firefighters raising a flag at the World Trade Center site.

But instead of sticking with this photo, the $180,000 sculpture, which will be erected in the spring at the Fire Department's Brooklyn headquarters, features one white, one black and one Hispanic firefighter, all raising the flag as in the photo.

The decision to represent different ethnicities was made by the Fire Department, the makers of the statue, and the property-management company that owns the department headquarters building and commissioned the work.

But family members of the firefighters in the photo have complained that the artist is trying to rewrite history. They say the photo, as it is, is reality, and any manipulation will subsequently change that moment.

The statue’s artist has responded by saying the sculpture is meant to be a tribute to the 343 New York firefighters who lost their lives in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, not a replica of the photo.

And that is a very important distinction.

In fact, the artist tried to purchase the copyright of the photo from North Jersey Media Group which owns the copyright, but was denied. So it is clear the statue is not supposed to be exactly the same as the original photo.

Opponents of the manipulation of the photo need to keep some things in mind when looking at the situation.

This tribute represents all races and all ethnicities of firefighters in New York City. It wasn’t meant to honor the firefighters who are alive and pictured putting the flag at the World Trade Center site. It wasn’t a memorial built for those three white firefighters, and it isn’t a memorial for the beautiful photo taken on that fateful day.

This isn’t about being politically correct, and those who are arguing that it is are misinterpreting the powerful meaning of the statue and what it is being built to represent.

This isn’t about being historical. Sure, the photo pictured three white firefighters. But the memorial is more than a snapshot in time, more than a recreation of the photo down to the last detail.

This is about remembering the hundreds of firefighters that worked to save people in the World Trade Center and those that died doing so.

All of them.

This house-editorial from the Iowa State Daily at Iowa State University
was distributed by U-Wire.

TCU Daily Skiff © 2002