INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis' tribute to the September 11 terrorist attacks now has a spray-painted message referencing the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.
The Indiana 9/11 Memorial overlooking the Downtown Canal now reads "Never Forget Gaza" after an unknown vandal used lime-green paint to write the last word on the monument.
"I can't tell you or the public what I would like to do to those people," said Sherman Goodwin, the executive director of the Indiana War Memorials Commission, which maintains the memorial. "They obviously don't have any respect. They don't understand how the world works."
Goodwin said he is angry not just because of the damage to the memorial, but because he is a veteran who helped protect the country on 9/11.
"On that day, I was Chief of Staff of the Indiana Air National Guard, and two of our pilots escorted Air Force One from Nebraska back to Washington D.C.," Goodwin recalled.
The memorial was unveiled on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2011. It features two steel beams from the World Trade Center and a tribute to Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude, who died when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
Goodwin said he has a team of veterans ready to clean up the graffiti the moment the weather clears up.
He hopes whoever left the painted word behind learns about how traumatizing 9/11 was for generations of Americans.
"Our world changed forever. The way you go to an airport, the way you go to a sporting event, things that we used to just take for granted."
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