BOSTON (AP) – The bustle of Logan International Airport fell silent seven years ago, when terror attacks launched there on Sept. 11 locked down airports around the U.S. A memorial dedicated there Tuesday offers a different kind of quiet, one designers hope brings peace to those left behind.

The $4 million glass memorial sits atop a 2.5-acre knoll at the Boston airport, surrounded by grass and ginkgo trees. Inside, two 11-foot panels list the 147 passengers and crew killed when terrorists flew the two planes from Boston into New York’s World Trade Center.

After a dedication ceremony, family and friends of those killed went through the memorial five years in the making. Tears came quickly, but so did smiles as they shared happy memories of those they lost.

Caroline Ogonowski, whose father, John, was the pilot of American Airline Flight 11, said the memorial struck her as a place of beauty, more than grief.

“It’s difficult, but it being seven years later I think I can look back on it and remember my father more with a smile and less with tears,” she said. “I think this is a celebration of their lives.”

Two memorials already exist at Logan – flagpoles over the United Airlines and American Airlines gates from where the two planes departed on Sept. 11. But Thomas Kinton, CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan, said the attacks were a permanent part of the airport’s culture, and workers and family members needed a permanent memorial to the enormous tragedy.

United Airlines flight attendant Sara Nelson, who lost several friends in the attack, said remembering those killed was a way to thwart the terrorist’s aims.

“When I think about how their memory fights against people who sought to do us harm, they cancel it out. And they surpass it,” Nelson said “They allow each one of us to know that it wasn’t evil that won that day.”

The memorial was funded by Massport.

, begins at “a point of origin,” from where two paths – representing the two flights – head in different directions and wind their way up the hill.

From each path, the ginkgo trees become more dense as the memorial gets closer, symbolizing how the community came together after the attacks, said Robert Linn of Moskow Linn Architects, which designed the memorial.

The glass cube is open on opposite corners. The first thing a visitor sees is the time each flight departed Logan, with the names of those lost listed on the other side of the panel. Above, panes of glass set at various angles are hung from intersecting steel cables, so the sky appears fractured, Linn said.

“It really describes that particular day, our lives were shattered in one minute,” said Alicia Curran of North Smithfield, R.I., whose sister, Amy Jarret, was a flight attendant on United Flight 175.

A stone wall separates the memorial from the highway, but the memorial is not isolated from Logan’s bustle. Rather, it sits amid pedestrian walkways, crisscrossing highways and descending planes.

Christie Coombs of Abington, whose husband, Jeff, was killed on American Airlines Flight 11, said that visibility is important.

“I hope that as people are flying out of the city, they look down and they see it and they remember,” she said.

AP-ES-09-09-08 1756EDT


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