Dave Sweet
WMAL.com
ARLINGTON, VA — (WMAL) Pentagon Memorial Fund (PMF) President Jim Laychack confirmed on Monday the site of the 9/11 Visitor Education Center will be within viewing distance of the Pentagon Memorial. The adjacent property, acquired from the Virginia Department of Transportation, is about a half-mile from a burial marker for five victims of the 9/11 Pentagon attacks.
“In 2009 when we started to take kids on school trips, we started to realize now that there’s an entire generation of people who don’t remember 9/11 or were born after it,” said Laychack.
The Pentagon, according to Laychack, is the only 9/11 site without a visitor education center. The purpose of such a center would be to teach people about “…the events of 9/11, the lives lost that day, and the historic significance of the Pentagon Memorial.”
A handful of organizations have already confirmed they would be providing content to the Visitor Education Center in partnership with the PMF, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Geographic Magazine and the Transportation Security Administration.
The construction process is still in its earliest stages. Questions remain regarding how it will be funded. Laychack has announced a $60 million fundraising campaign to finance construction, and then a separate $15 million campaign to supplement an existing endowment that will fund day-to-day operations.
Laychack is extremely confident in the PMF’s ability to raise the money needed. He says the goal of this project is to inform people, and that’s something people will be quick to support.
“Every visitors center has their own story to tell,” said Laychack. “Ours is how our nation and how our federal government responded on September 11, 2001.”
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