A woman places her hand on a name etched in the wall of one of the pools at the 9/11 memorial plaza in the World …The somber 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is behind us. But for one victim's family, the New York memorial to the victims of the World Trade Center's destruction has left an unpleasant memory of its own--a misspelled first name, carved in stone.Jeffrey Schreier was killed on 9/11 while working at Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm based in the World Trade Center that was nearly wiped out in the attacks. But on the memorial unveiled this weekend, Schreier's first name was misspelled as "Jeffery," a spokesman for the memorial, Michael Frazier, said.
"We are extremely sorry for the pain this mistake has caused Jeffrey's family," Frazier added in an e-mail to the New York Times. "As soon as we found out about this error, we began working on how to make it right, and we're engaged with our fabricators, contractors and the architect to do so."
[ Photos: Images of the memorial at Ground Zero ]
There has also been controversy over how to organize the victims' names. At first, the idea was to arrange them without any order, because of the random nature of the way the victims died. But after family members and firefighters complained, the plan changed. Spouses and family members are grouped together, as are co-workers from companies in the tower. First responders' names are engraved in a ribbon on a parapet overlooking the south reflecting pool, and are grouped by command, precinct or company. There is no grouping by rank, however, for either firefighters or police officers.
And this isn't the only major memorial whose launch hasn't gone perfectly smoothly. The designers of the Martin Luther King memorial, unveiled last month in Washington, D.C., were criticized for including a truncated quote from the civil-rights icon, which some said made him appear arrogant.
At least King's name was spelled correctly, though.
