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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Cliff Siegfried

Aired August 11, 2002 - 08:39   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Stark reminders of America's brutal wake-up call go on display at the New York State Museum. One of the lasting images from September 11 is that crumpled, ash-shrouded New York fire truck. It will be part of an exhibit honoring the thousands of people who died in the terrorist attacks. Here's a sample of the exhibit from the museum's director.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLIFF SIEGFRIED, MUSEUM CURATOR: Since the winter, we've been very active at ground zero and at the fresh kills landfill, collecting material and more material from the streets of New York to preserve the history of the World Trade Center. We had a very narrow window to do that, and we've worked quickly and forging good relationships with police and FBI and the people in the city to do that.

It's very interesting to see this stuff in the flesh. Not everybody made it to New York, and the fact that this was theirs is pretty remarkable for history we have this. We try to think about what would people think 100 years from now. What would they want to see?

This is actually a piece of a block long memorial that we removed from Broadway and Liberty Streets in New York in May, and the city called on us, they're reopening streets around the World Trade Center, and this was a big, well-known block where people from all over the world have come and left material. You can see flags and T-shirts and signs and things. And families also came and left photographs of loved ones.

This is children's art and teddy bears and the kinds of things that children and people sent to the New York Fire Department and police department and to families, and they weren't going to throw it all out, but they couldn't keep it all. And we thought it was interesting, and it's always just an interesting take that kids have on what happened through their eyes.

These are the rear doors of an ambulance. This is one of many sort of emergency rescue sort of objects that we collected from the fresh kills landfill. This was in the collapse, at the very bottom of the collapse in the towers. And so the damage is pretty remarkable.

This is rescue material. There's a piece of hose from a fire truck. There is a small fire box that you would call any kind of that rescue material was important to save. The bent piece of metal in the front is a plate from the front of a fire truck. So that came off one of the fire trucks, the many trucks that were destroyed in the collapse.

The presence of these things is very powerful. They still have dirt and concrete on them from the World Trade Center. And if you have seen a picture of this, a sense that you understand it, but when you see an object, you get a really gut feeling about it and the drama of what happened, and I think you carry that through life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Pretty indelible images that you can see in person when you go to that exhibit at the New York State Museum.

Joining us now from Albany is Cliff Siegfried. Thank you very much. Talk to us a little bit more about that exhibit. Thanks for joining us this morning.

SIEGFRIED: My pleasure.

WHITFIELD: The fresh kills landfill was also considered very much sacred ground along with ground zero. At what point was it decided that it might be important to try and take some of those objects from the landfill and couple them with photographs and put on an exhibit?

SIEGFRIED: It was very early in the process. Soon after 9/11, museums began to have a conversation about how best to document the event, document the World Trade Center itself. And a group, a consortium of museums, worked together to try to make up a list of what are the best ways, what are the objects that would best characterize the life of the building, the building itself?

And working with the governor's office, with other agencies, we got access to the Staten Island landfill and worked closely with the FBI, the state police, city police that were out there, essentially at a crime scene. They were sifting, sifting the two million tons of debris, looking for remains, human remains, evidence and personal effects. And then what was left were -- was material that had the potential to document the site.

WHITFIELD: Was there a feeling that there was a pretty significant number of people in the public who perhaps didn't have a good grasp as to the impact of this tragic event, and therein lies the need for an exhibit of this nature?

SIEGFRIED: Well, I think the -- this is one of those events. I don't believe there's anything more documented, either through the media or wherever, than that disaster. But there is so much and it's so overwhelming that there may be a number of people that it's become confused. The first 24 hours that we'll be showing in detail in our exhibit that opens next month may be confused, and this will have an opportunity to at least show people in detail just exactly what happened during those first 24 hours.

WHITFIELD: What kind of reception have you gotten from survivors, family members, even of emergency workers, since an awful lot of their equipment is part of that exhibit as well? SIEGFRIED: Well, one of the things we've done is worked very closely with the firefighters, with the families to help -- ask for their help to help us decide what to exhibit, how to collect it. And the fire truck, we worked closely with the firefighters. They wanted that fire truck as part of the display.

We worked with the police. The police have given us a holster that they collected or that was collected from the Staten Island landfill that certainly an officer probably was wearing, but there's nothing left that could identify it as to who exactly it belonged to, and they wanted it included as a presence in the exhibit for their lost staff members.

WHITFIELD: It has to be an incredibly emotional experience going through that exhibit for anyone, whether you're involved directly or not, I imagine?

SIEGFRIED: Well, it's a difficult exhibit to -- you know, everybody has such emotional ties, feelings about what happened. They enter the exhibit. I've been down there and watched people step in and step right out, and heard them saying that, you know, I thought I was ready for this, but I'm just not ready yet.

But even our team that's working to put the -- this exhibit and then the next exhibit together, at times has to pause and collect themselves. These objects are so powerful, and just the events are so laden with emotion that this is a very difficult process to go through.

WHITFIELD: All right. The exhibit at the New York State Museum. Cliff Siegfried, thank you very much, the director of that museum, for joining us this morning. I appreciate it.

SIEGFRIED: Thanks for having me.

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