TV documentary set to air

Originally published Sunday, March 10, 2002

Although it has been only six months since the World Trade Center was attacked, already it seems as though we can't be shocked by those events anymore. But a much-anticipated piece of film will be shown at 9 tonight on CBS (KIRO, Channel 7) in a two-hour special called "9/11."

A firsthand piece of history, the program draws on 180 hours of film shot by brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who had been making a documentary about a rookie firefighter at a station near the World Trade Center. That work had them at the scene -- including inside the World Trade Center -- before, during and after the attacks.

Gedeon, 31, was the more experienced filmmaker. Jules, 28, was just learning to shoot, and on Sept. 11 he tagged along with the battalion chief to practice his camera work. Even before he found himself in the lobby of the first tower, he showed a filmmaker's instinct. Hearing a roar overhead, he pointed the camera up and captured the first plane crashing into the tower, which erupted in a giant burst of bright orange flame. He is the only person to have captured that crash.

Nextel will underwrite the cost of airing the documentary, so the show will air without commercial interruptions.

New life for damaged sculpture

"The Sphere," the steel and bronze sculpture that was once a meeting point for World Trade Center workers, will become a focal point again as a memorial for those killed in the twin towers. But the creator of the 45,000-pound sculpture, which was damaged in the Sept. 11 attack, said he has mixed feelings about using his work in a memorial.

"I hope I will still be able to consider myself the creator of this work," German sculptor Fritz Koenig, 77, said from his home in Landshut, Germany, before departing for New York to see his work and its new home in Battery Park.

The gashed and dented sculpture and a surrounding section of Battery Park, a few blocks from ground zero, will serve as a temporary memorial until a permanent one is built.

The temporary memorial will be dedicated Monday, six months after the attacks, at 8:46 a.m. EST -- the time the first of two hijacked jetliners slammed into the trade center.

The Sphere will be surrounded by trees and benches for mourners.

Created in 1971, The Sphere was originally dedicated as a monument to world peace through trade. Until Sept. 11, it sat atop a granite fountain at the center of the five-acre trade center plaza. It was a landmark for people who worked or lived near the twin towers.

When the towers collapsed, the top of The Sphere lost about five feet off its 25-foot height.

Koenig has designed memorials to those who died at a Nazi death camp in Mauthausen, Austria, and to the Israeli athletes killed at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

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The Olympian Copyright 2002

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