“Ordinarily I would not want a reference to his murder on his memorial, but there seems to be an effort to whitewash what happened that day,’’ said Gadiel, 61, a retired real estate investor.
“I don’t think it’s right that people should be murdered like that and that people intentionally forget what happened. It’s wrong. It’s immoral.’’
Gadiel’s 23-year-old son, James, was working for the Cantor Fitzgerald brokerage firm when he was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Town leaders agree that Muslim terrorists were responsible, but they insist that saying it on a public memorial plaque would be wrong. They say many local residents support their position, while most of the criticism is coming from outsiders.
“We’re a very welcoming, caring community,’’ said First Selectwoman Ruth Epstein, who did not seek reelection this year. “To disparage a particular religious group would not be appropriate. There are things that are just insensitive and we feel we don’t want here.’’
Epstein said the town has received about 150 e-mails and numerous calls on the issue. She said many of them supporting Gadiel were obscene, vile, and threatening, including one from a person who hoped Epstein and her family were killed by terrorists. Epstein thinks the controversy is unfortunate, but she said Gadiel’s proposed wording is harsh.
“James was a lovely young man,’’ she said. “Something that would memorialize him rather than focus on the horror of that time would be so much better.’’
The flare-up gained traction last week when Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly talked about it on “The O’Reilly Factor.’’
“He wants to tell the truth on his son’s memorial and I’m behind him,’’ O’Reilly said on the show. “Let’s get the memorial up. We’ll march into Kent, Connecticut. We’ll all go up there and tell the guys to put it up.’’
“And if we have to charter a bus and go up there, we may have to do that,’’ he added.
Kent, home to former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, is a rural town of about 3,000 people on the New York state border.
