Who's a Hero?

The Statesman had an article about design finalists for a 9/11 Texas State Memorial. A couple of the designs, all of which feature twisted beams from the WTC, actually look decent.

The crappy one, "a circle of three limestone walls separated by wrought-iron fencing" around a WTC beam is lagging way behind the other two on Statesman's poll (at a measly 6%). On the limestone walls would be inscribed the names of Texans killed at the WTC and in Afghanistan. So the look would be of an imprisoned WTC beam encircled by a poor copy of the Vietnam memorial, I guess.

The other two both look decent, but I prefer the natural look of the reflective pool design. No big lists of names, just natural granite and limestone, a soft waterfall and the beams left to weather with time.

The third one, a granite spiral looks rather cool, too, but just sounds too busy to me. According to the project leader, "the events of the day — the fall of the twin towers, the wreck at the Pentagon, the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania and President Bush's address to the nation — would be marked along the rising granite wall". Apparently, "as the day went by, the news got worse and worse, but Bush's statements, they were inspiring." Maybe my memory is fading, but I remember an inspiring speech by New York's Rudolph Giuliani and an eloquent and heartfelt address by Britain's Tony Blair. As for Bush, I remember him running scared from place to place and then eventually doing one of his incoherent speeches.

Now I had no idea that the state was actually planning to build an official memorial to September 11. The memorial will be build at the State Cemetery to "honor the five Texans killed in the collapse of the towers and the three Texans killed in action during the ground war in Afghanistan". The board chairman said that "these are Texas heroes" and (emulating Bush's speech pattern) "this cemetery is for Texas heroes, for Texans."

I really get annoyed by the superlative terms used whenever anyone makes some sort of speech or public comment (and they seem to always do this when talking about anything remotely connected to 9-11). It so takes away from the meaning of a word when it gets overused all the time. Why in the world would the five Texans who were killed in the WTC be "heroes"? Unless they did anything extraordinary they simply were victims of a terrible act, no different from someone getting shot by a mugger, or run over by a drunk driver or killed by a misguided bomb. There is nothing heroic about those senseless deaths. Yes, there were heroes on September 11, they include the fire fighters and other emergency workers as well as regular people in and around the towers that were helping their fellow men and many of which paid for their effort with their lives. But in my eyes, just getting killed by a terrorist does not make one a hero - no matter how many politicians, pundits or TV specials say so.