A Super Bowl ad for Colonial Williamsburg — which depicted images of the World Trade Center’s collapse in reverse — was upsetting and wrong, said some relatives of 9/11 victims Monday.
The minute-long commercial that aired regionally across New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. during Super Bowl showed video clips of the nation’s watershed moments in reverse as narrator Tom Brokaw asked the viewers what formative experiences have shaped the country.
“When you reflect upon our sacrifices, our breakthroughs, and yes, our heartbreaks,” Brokaw says over footage of a smoking tower crumbling before asking, “Where did our spirit first take shape?”
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Retired FDNY deputy chief Jim Riches said he’s never forgotten the day the towers fell, killing his firefighter son Jimmy Jr., and doesn’t need a tourism promo to remind him of the terror attack.
“Watching that opens the wounds again,” he said.
“We’re sitting there trying to forget — and we never forget my sons never going to walk back through that door — and it pops right up again and knocks back over.”
Riches said it’s predatory to exploit 9/11 as a profit source.
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“To use the worst day in American history for commercial purposes is ridiculous and it’s wrong,” he charged. “I hope they didn’t use that commercial to make money but I’m sure they did.”
“3000 people lost their loved ones that day. You don’t need to show that. It’s the worst day in our history,” he said.
Sally Regenhard, whose son Christian — also a firefighter who died in the attack, condemned the ad.
“9/11 was about the massacre of 3,000 people whose loved ones are still grieving every day and to see that in an ad campaign,” she said, overcome with incredulity.
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“This is part of a larger issue of using our dead as a tourist trap,” she said.
Regenhard blamed the 9/11 museum for propagating the use of such footage.
“The unconscionable amount of advertising by the 9/11 museum has really given license to use (the attacks) as a marketing tool.”
A spokesperson for the 9/11 museum declined to comment on the situation.
The ad, titled “It started here” and produced by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia, also showed images of Presidents Obama and Reagan, a Wright brother’s flight, war memorials and suffragettes, but didn’t show the “living history museum” itself.
A spokesman for the foundation however, said the majority of responses about the ad have been in favor of it.
“The ad has been ‘trending’ positively on Facebook,” Joe Straw said in a press release. An earlier 30-second version of the commercial “received an overwhelmingly positive response, and has started an online conversation about America’s collective history,” he said.
“We understand and respect that some of the images depicted in the ad may be jarring to some, but the outpouring of support on social media sends a powerful message that the past must be remembered if we are to succeed as a Nation,” said the foundation’s senior spokesman, Kevin Crossett.
Posts across social media reveal a dichotomy of responses to the ad.
YouTube user Kathy Stackhouse, who apparently lives in Virginia, commented “Great ad! It brought tears to my eyes. If I didn’t live here already, I would definitely want to visit and find out more.”
Others were not as kind.
“Using 9/11 for commercial purposes is as uncool as using Auschwitz. #colonialwilliamsburg,” Alex Polkhovsky tweeted.
Riches thinks the decision to use that footage might ultimately hurt the not-for-profit organization.
“They hit a lot of raw nerves with people from New York last night. It was very crude.”
