aren’t the only ones who are getting in on the action. The U.S. Mint recently released a congressionally approved commemorative silver medal, with the museum getting $10 out of each $56.95 medallion sold, or $20 million if all 2 million medals are vended.
The Tribute WTC 9/11 Visitor Center sells everything from a “plush rescue puppy,” refrigerator magnets, coffee cups, Christmas ornaments, bracelets, lanyards, keyrings, hats, postcards, umbrellas, coffee cups to lapel pins — and even a $21.95 WTC remembrance clear glass beer mug. There will be a snack bar and souvenir store in the new museum, selling similar trinkets.
confl agration, tells Newsmax, “This is supposed to be a place of reverence, remembrance, and honor, and they are trying to turn it into a revenue- generating tourist attraction.” Online marketplace eBay banned 9/11 and WTC object sales right after the attack, but that didn’t last long. Today, an eBay search reveals over 40,000 9/11 articles for sale. The sidewalk and online schlock-hawkers
Feal
“They are money-hungry and greedy, and the families have been pushed aside,” Riches tells Newsmax. “The museum offi cials call people in the streets selling T-shirts ‘vultures and scavengers,’ but they are doing the same thing.” Victims’
families question why
it will cost $60 million to operate the museum. Riches tells Newsmax, “You had little kids selling brownies and donating pennies to help pay for the museum and memorial, and
people on the board are making huge salaries. They could cut a lot off operating costs by cutting these salaries. It’s disgusting.” The New York Post noted chief executive Daniels’ salary of $371,307, and fi ve-fi gure salaries granted to offi cials of the foundation, quoting Sandra Miniutti, of the nonprofi t watchdog Charity Navigator, who called the salaries “on the high side for a comparable-sized organization.” The 10-acre site has two parts: the open-air memorial, to be open on Sept. 11 of this year, with benches and pools, which will be free, and the museum, which will cost, though Daniels insists family members will not be charged.
But Regenhard tells Newsmax, “What is a family member? What about grandparents? Cousins? Close colleagues? It is totally inappropriate.” Admission to the Pentagon Memorial and the Flight 93 National Memorial is free and, Riches notes, there is no admission fee at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, or to Civil War battlefi elds. Riches says, “The Museum Foundation is making money by charging people to get into a cemetery. It is a disgrace.”
9/11 HEROES • by John Feal, founder of Feal Good Foundation
I WAS AT GROUND ZERO FOR FIVE days. On Sept. 17, roughly 8,000 pounds of steel crushed my left foot. The man next to me fainted because blood was squirting out of my feet. I took his belt off, made a tourniquet, and hobbled over to the curb. I spent 10 weeks in the hospital, had multiple surgeries, and wound up losing half of my left foot. In 2002 I started going to support groups to talk about my story and to meet other people who were affected by 9/11. You know how they always say there’s always somebody worse off than you? Well I found that to be true. I wasn’t married and I didn’t have kids, and I saw all these people and their families devastated by what happened to them down there — they lost their jobs, they lost their income, and they were getting sicker.
While I was fi ghting for my own benefi ts, which took years, I never gave up. Other people with all these “invisible” disease like cancer and respiratory problems, they had to prove they got sick. I had nothing to prove but I still kept getting denied.
In 2005, I started the Feal Good Foundation with no experience in these kinds of things, but I knew it had to be done. Since then I’ve donated over $400,000 and helped thousands of people get benefi ts for workmen’s comp, Social Security, and pensions. I’ve been to 53 funerals in the last 4 1/2 years. I’ve paid for 16 of them and helped pay for the others.
No American, especially those who gave their all for this country, should have to go through what these people are going through because of their heroic actions.
SEPTEMBER 2011 / NEWSMAX / 9|11: A DECADE LATER 89
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