Story highlights National September 11 Memorial Museum is open to the public in New York 
 
 The exhibition halls are filled with personal things as well as oral histories and photos 
 
 Museum curator had the difficult task of deciding how much tragedy to show 
 
 The museum is also about how people can be good to one another in times of crisis, curator says 
 
 When does the ordinary -- letters, gloves, wallets -- become extraordinary? 
 
 When the objects tell a story: a stack of personal letters that fell to the ground after a hijacked plane plowed into the World Trade Center; leather gloves worn in the recovery effort; a red wallet belonging to a woman who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. 
 
 Tragedy turns the mundane into memorial. Something as simple as a wallet can evoke the immense sadness of a day like September 11, 2001. 
 
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 Objects big and small from the greatest terrorist attack on American soil now make up a museum dedicated to that tragedy and the 2,983 people who perished. It is one of America's largest and most ambitious memorial museums, almost entirely subterranean and erected in the graveyard of Osama bin Laden's victims. 
 
 A police officer found Genni Gambale's red wallet on the roof of a Marriott hotel, a few blocks south of the Trade Center, days after the attacks. In the wallet were a scorched American Express Corporate card, a $115 coupon for Lenscrafters, a Brooklyn Public Library card, pennies, nickels, dimes. 
 
 Construction worker Frank Silecchia found a crossbeam in the rubble that resembled a cross. It became a key exhibit at the new museum. 
 
 Now under thick Plexiglass, the wallet tells of a life cut short. Gambale was one of many trapped on the upper floors after American Airlines Flight 11 plowed into the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. She was 27. 
 
 The National September 11 Memorial Museum opened in May for the 9/11 community -- survivors, families, rescuers. Shortly after it opened to the general public. 
 
 The place in itself is an artifact, built in the bedrock of tragedy. Within it are 12,500 objects, 1,995 oral histories and 580 hours of film and video. "An airplane hangar full of largely bruised, contorted artifacts" formed the basis of the museum, says curator Jan Ramirez. 
 
 They are objects that cheated destruction. They survived the obliteration of the material world and assumed an otherworldly quality. 
 
 But they also could inflict pain again. 
 
 From the beginning, Ramirez and all those who worked under museum director Alice Greenwald faced a flurry of contradictions and dilemmas over what to show, how much to reveal. 
 
 Where the twin towers once soared are now two sunken granite pools, positioned in the footprints of the giant buildings that came crashing down that day. They are meant to be places of reflection and mourning. 
 
 What was the museum's intent? Was it to illustrate a narrative of what happened on September 11? Or would it be a repository for the study of an American tragedy? 
 
 If it were the latter, the museum would have to collect objects much more broadly. 
 
 "We decided to take that path. We decided to be ambitious and daring," Ramirez said. 
 
 Firefighter James Wind rushed to the scene to help. The first thing he saw was his fire company's heavily damaged truck. 
 
 But with that decision came new concerns and obstacles. How do you portray horror without overwhelming people who come to visit? How do you memorialize things that people might rather not remember? 
 
 The museum, said Ramirez, is sure to be emotionally overwhelming to anyone who survived September 11, to all New Yorkers, and perhaps even to the millions of people who watched the events of that day unfold on television. 
 
 She described the helmets of firefighters that were donated by their families. Some were so brutalized that it's not hard to imagine the severe trauma to the heads those helmets were meant to protect. 
 
 "We all had our different thresholds about what was the right thing to do," Ramirez said. "We want to remind people why 9/11 was unlike any other day the country has experienced. But we did not want to cross a threshold where a visitor's empathy shuts down. That would be a horrible misfire of our objectives." 
 
 So some things in the museum are clearly marked and separated in alcoves. In one section are images of people jumping to their deaths from the towering infernos. 
 
 "In the end we felt this was part of the morning's indelible horror," Ramirez said. "To edit that out might arouse suspicion about what else we edited out." 
 
 The museum collected items from survivors, families of the dead, first responders, cleanup workers and agencies that were part of the investigation. 
 
 Objects like Gambele's wallet were precious to families. In many cases, bodies were never recovered or identified. Objects were all the families got back. 
 
 Other objects mean something to survivors. 
 
 Hazem Gamal worked for OppenheimerFunds on the 34th floor of the South Tower. He stored personal letters in a filing cabinet in his office. In December 2001, a demolition consultant, Ray Coleman, discovered the letters amid the rubble. He was amazed by them. 
 
 New York police officer David Brink picked up a pair of gloves from a hospitality tent for recovery workers. Someone had written the words, "Thank you" on them. 
 
 Nothing else Coleman had seen was discernible. No chair, table, computer. Everything was pulverized or mangled beyond recognition. But these letters were intact, only slightly singed and waterlogged. The clip holding them together had rusted. 
 
 Coleman kept the letters for a year. He was afraid that if he called the owner, he might learn that he had died. Finally, in November 2002, he dialed Gamel's home. Then he returned the letters. 
 
 He included this note written in pencil on engineer's paper: 
 
 "I hope that you will cherish these papers, and cherish your family," he wrote. "If this project did anything for me, it has taught me to love every minute, love my family and friends, and take time to do the things that are really important." 
 
 Others donated personal property that helps viewers understand their loved ones better. Brian Sweeney's wife donated a handmade Viking helmet; he was so proud of his Viking heritage. 
 
 "It creates a sense of joy," Ramirez said. "They were enjoying life. It's the opposite of the ideology of ending life." 
 
 Sweeney, a former Navy pilot, was on United Airlines Flight 175. His last words to his wife were recorded in a voice mail shortly before the hijacked plane crashed into the South Tower: 
 
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 "If things don't go well, and it's not looking good, I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to do good, go have good times. Same to my parents and everybody, and I just totally love you, and I'll see you when you get there." 
 
 New York police officer David Brink donated a suitcase full of things to the museum, including a pair of gloves he picked up in a hospitality tent set up at ground zero. 
 
 Brink, like other recovery workers, used his hands to scour through a wasteland of debris. He had to change out his gloves frequently because they got so damaged. One day, he picked up a pair of leather gloves and didn't notice until later, when he was in the wreckage, that someone had taken a ballpoint pen to the palms of the gloves and written, "Thank you." 
 
 He didn't know where the gloves came from or who had written those words. The hospitality tents had equipment and supplies donated by people from all over America. 
 
 The gloves could have been from a firefighter in California or a school kid in Indiana or a housewife in Iowa, Brink thought. But the "Thank you" helped him get through trying days. 
 
 Over the years, some objects became symbols of 9/11. 
 
 One was the fire truck that belonged to the New York Fire Department's Ladder Company 3. 
 
 On September 11, Capt. Paddy Brown and Lt. Kevin Donnelly had rushed with their crew from Manhattan's East Village to the North Tower minutes after Flight 11 struck. The firefighters made their way up the skyscraper to find and evacuate victims. Some people later said the sight of the firefighters gave them a sense of calm in the midst of terror. 
 
 A short while later, 11 members of Ladder 3 were dead as the North Tower crumpled. 
 
 James Wind, a member of Ladder 3, was off that day. But he made his way to ground zero to help. 
 
 When he arrived on the scene, he saw his company's truck. The ladder was bent down to the bumper. The front of the truck was on fire but it was still running and the lights were on. 
 
 "That truck was battered around like a ping-pong ball," Wind said. "It was a beast, but there was a bigger beast that took it." 
 
 An officer always carries a list of his men and leaves a copy in the truck. Wind reached in and looked at the second list. He hoped beyond hope but knew: He was probably looking at names of the dead. 
 
 They were his friends, his brothers. He knew their wives, their lives. He'd seen them almost every day for years. 
 
 He wants visitors to see the mangled truck at the museum. "Live your life," he said, "but be aware. This can happen still." 
 
 Construction worker Frank Silecchia felt damaged from days of recovery efforts. He'd already worn through several pairs of boots -- the steel was so hot at the site that it melted the soles. He'd volunteered to help with the hope of finding a survivor. He found none. 
 
 On Day 3, he helped carry out three bodies from 6 World Trade Center and paused to look out at the destruction. A 17-foot-long crossbeam weighing at least two tons had landed at a perfect vertical angle. Silecchia saw a cross. 
 
 He dropped to his knees in tears. 
 
 He believed it was a sign from God. He found renewed strength to carry on. 
 
 "Evil destroyed that building," Silecchia said, "and faith rose out if it." 
 
 A few days later, he showed his discovery to a Franciscan priest named Father Jordan, who pushed to get the World Trade Center cross lifted out of the wreckage and preserved near the site. 
 
 Silecchia believes the museum will be like walking through a horror show for some visitors. He hopes that seeing the cross there will bring comfort, just as it did for him 13 years ago. 
 
 Ramirez, the museum's curator, said regardless of religious belief, people found inspiration in the cross and that is why it was included in the museum. She hopes the ordinary objects in the exhibit stand as testament to courage, kindness and human resiliency. 
 
 Ramirez considers herself and her colleagues at the September 11 museum third responders. They are the people who set evidence aside; the people whose job it was to give meaning to ordinary objects. 
 
 "It's a collective story about how people can be good to one another in times of crisis," she said. "We've put out our first draft of history." ||||| Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE USA TODAY looks at the National 9/11 Memorial Museum. (From May 15th) Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY 
 
 President Obama speaks during the opening ceremony for the National September 11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero in New York City. (Photo: Pool photo by Getty Images) 
 
 NEW YORK — The National September 11 Museum, which President Obama praised at its dedication Thursday as "a sacred place of healing," has in its development years repeatedly aroused bitter divisions over how to tell the story of the terror attacks. 
 
 The museum, which opens to the public Wednesday, has faced what urban anthropologist Elizabeth Greenspan calls "controversy after controversy.'' Disputes have ranged from the disposition of human remains to the $24 general admission price. 
 
 Greenspan, author of The Battle for Ground Zero, says much of the contention has stemmed from the institution's dual, and often conflicted, mission: to commemorate those who died in the 2001 attacks, and to explain the attacks themselves. 
 
 Jeffrey Melnick, a University of Massachusetts Boston cultural historian who has studied 9/11, says the museum's problem is the one that bedeviled redevelopment of the entire 16-acre World Trade Center site: "Too many different stakeholders trying to do too many different things in one place.'' 
 
 And possibly trying to do it too soon. Greenspan says the history that the museum seeks to convey to visitors "is still delicate.'' 
 
 Among the controversies in which the museum has been embroiled over the past eight years: 
 
 • Whether unidentified human remains recovered from Ground Zero should be kept in a private medical examiner's office site in the subterranean museum. When a solemn procession took remains to the museum Saturday, some relatives showed their opposition by standing with black tape over their mouths. 
 
 • Whether the exhibit, by displaying the hijackers' photographs and names, glorifies them and insults their victims' memories. The museum compromised by using small head shots marked as FBI evidence. 
 
 • Whether a brief explanatory film narrated by NBC's Brian Williams about the 9/11 conspiracy unfairly links al-Qaeda terrorism with Islam. An imam who sat on an interfaith clergy museum advisory committee resigned in protest, but the museum stuck by the film. 
 
 • Whether the presence in the museum of the "Ground Zero Cross,'' a cross section of steel I-beams found in the rubble that inspired many recovery workers, constitutes an endorsement of Christianity by a public institution. An atheist group has appealed a lower court ruling that there was no church-state problem. 
 
 Because of these and other issues, some family members have said they'll boycott the museum. 
 
 But on Thursday at least one 9/11 survivor said he found the experience powerful. 
 
 Tim Brown, a 51-year-old retired firefighter, said he lost 93 friends in the department on 9/11. He said he was moved to tears when he visited the museum's memorial section and saw the wall of photos of those who died that day. 
 
 "There were so many (firefighters) who died that sometimes you forget who lived and who died,'' he said. "So you see someone's photo here, and say, 'I forgot he died.' It's hard for us.'' 
 
 Now that the museum is opening, will divisions begin to heal? Don't bet on it, said Greenspan: "I think there'll be even more debate. We have to go through that to get to a more consensual place.'' 
 
 She was echoed by Jefferson Crowther, whose son Welles died a hero helping other workers flee the South Tower. "This is America,'' he said. "Everyone's got a bone to pick.'' 
 
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 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1ltMooh ||||| In the footprint of Ground Zero, the site of the tragedy that killed more than 2,000 people, President Obama and New York political leaders gathered to remind us that the emotional weight of Sept. 11, 2001, still hasn't lifted. 
 
 They, along with hundreds of people, were gathered to dedicate the 9/11 Museum, which opens to the public Monday. 
 
 The dedication began with a children's choir singing the song "Somewhere" from the musical West Side Story—their voices echoing in the cavernous room bordered by the walls that formed the original bedrock of the Twin Towers. 
 
 At the event were Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, along with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, current Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Notably absent from the event was George W. Bush. 
 
 Read President Obama's full remarks from the event: 
 
 Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Cuomo, honored guests, families of the fallen: In those awful moments after the South Tower was hit, some of the injured huddled in the wreckage of the 78th floor. The fires were spreading. The air was filled with smoke. It was dark. They could barely see. It seemed as if there was no way out. And then there came a voice—clear, calm, saying he had found the stairs. A young man, in his 20s, strong, emerged from the smoke, and over his nose and his mouth, he wore a red handkerchief. He called for fire extinguishers to fight back the flames. He attended to the wounded. He led those survivors down the stairs to safety, and carried a woman on his shoulders down 17 flights. Then, he went back, back up all those flights, then back down again, bringing more wounded to safety, until that moment when the tower fell. They didn't know his name. They didn't know where he came from, but they knew their lives had been saved by the man in the red bandanna. 
 
 Again, Mayor Bloomberg, distinguished guests, Mayor DeBlasio, Governors Christie and Cuomo, the families and survivors of that day, to all those who responded with such courage, on behalf of Michelle and myself and the American people, it is an honor for us to join in your memories. To recall and to reflect, but above all, to reaffirm the true spirit of 9/11—love, compassion, sacrifice—and to enshrine it forever in the heart of our nation. 
 
 Michelle and I just had the opportunity to join with others on a visit with some of the survivors and families—men and women who inspire us all—and we had the chance to visit some of the exhibits. And I think all who come here will find it to be a profound and moving experience. I want to express our deep gratitude to everybody who was involved in this great undertaking, for bringing us to this day, for giving us this sacred place of healing and of hope. Here at this memorial, at this museum, we come together. We stand in the footprints of two mighty towers, graced by the rush of eternal waters. We look into the faces of nearly 3,000 innocent souls, men and women and children of every race, every creed, from every corner of the world. We can touch their names and hear their voices and glimpse the small items that speak to the beauty of their lives—a wedding ring, a helmet, a shining badge. Here we tell their story so that generations yet unborn will never forget. Of coworkers who led others to safety. The passengers who stormed the cockpit. Our men and women in uniform who rushed into an inferno. Our first responders who charged up those stairs. A generation of service members—our 9/11 generation—who have served with honor in more than a decade of war. A nation that stands tall and united and unafraid because no act of terror can match the strength or the character of our country. Like the great wall and bedrock that embrace us today, nothing can ever break us. Nothing can change who we are as Americans. 
 
 On that September morning, Allison Crowther lost her son, Welles. Months later, she was reading the newspaper, an article about those final minutes in the towers. Survivors recounted how a young man wearing a red handkerchief had led them to safety. And in that moment, Allison knew. Ever since he was a boy, her son had always carried a red handkerchief. Her son, Welles, was the man in the red bandanna. Welles was just 24 years old, with a broad smile and a bright future. He worked in the South Tower on the 104th floor. He had a big laugh, a joy of life, and dreams of seeing the world. He worked in finance, but he had also been a volunteer firefighter. And after the planes hit, he put on that bandanna and spent his final moments saving others. Three years ago this month, after our SEALS made sure that justice was done, I came to Ground Zero. And among the families here that day was Allison Crowther, and she told me about Welles and his fearless spirit. And she showed me a handkerchief like the one he wore that morning. And today, as we saw on our tour, one of his red handkerchiefs is on display in this museum. And from this day forward, all those who come here will have a chance to know the sacrifice of a young man who, like so many, gave his life so others might live. Those we lost live on in us—in the families who love them still, in the friends who remember them always, and in a nation that will honor them now and forever. And today it is my honor to introduce two women forever bound by that day united in their determination to keep alive the true spirit of 9/11: Welles Crowther's mother, Allison, and one of those he saved, Ling Young.
– President Obama today helped dedicate the National September 11 Memorial Museum, and his comments opened with the recollection of a man who "emerged from the smoke, and over his nose and his mouth, he wore a red handkerchief." It was Welles Crowther, a 24-year-old working on the South Tower's 104th floor who, as Obama explained, had carried a red handkerchief with him since he was a child. And on 9/11, the "man in the red bandana" was a hero: "He called for fire extinguishers to fight back the flames. He attended to the wounded. He led those survivors down the stairs to safety, and carried a woman on his shoulders down 17 flights. Then, he went back, back up all those flights, then back down again, bringing more wounded to safety, until that moment when the tower fell. ... And today, as we saw on our tour, one of his red handkerchiefs is on display in this museum. And from this day forward, all those who come here will have a chance to know the sacrifice of a young man who, like so many, gave his life so others might live." In advance of his comments, Obama, the first lady, and former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg toured the museum, whose seven stories hold artifacts from the attack, including what CNN calls the "ordinary": leather gloves (used during the recovery effort), a red wallet (owned by a Cantor Fitzgerald employee), a $2 bill (from the wallet of a victim who gave his wife one, too, as a reminder of their second chance at love). USA Today reports that 9/11 survivors, the victims' families, and first responders can visit for free between now and when it opens to the public (admission: $24) on Wednesday.