April 4, 2002, 12:24AM

'Real faces' of 9-11 victims sought for memorial project

By BETTY L. MARTIN
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

Hollywood could never accurately portray Donald Greene's appreciation for variety -- sailing boats or flying planes, enjoying opera or a good belly dance, coaching soccer or just being with his 10- and 6-year-old children.

For families of people like Greene, who died Sept. 11, America's 9-11 Memorial Quilts: In Memory is working to make sure their loss is represented by faces of real people, not movie-of-the-week images caught between commercials, says Debbie Rand.

A Westchase-area resident who was Greene's first cousin, Rand has joined a small army of quilters and other supporters of a project honoring those who died Sept. 11 by transferring victims' photos to cloth and stitching them into six memorial quilts.

Rand is reaching out to victims' families, quilters and others driven to do something since the day terrorists drove planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa., the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.

Greene, her late mother's sister's son, and 43 other sons, daughters, mothers and fathers perished aboard Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, apparently after a failed attempt by passengers to take control of the plane.

The project began with a small group of Florida women who are now asking the families of people killed Sept. 11 and afterward to send names and photos of the people lost in the World Trade Center complex, the Pentagon, Shanksville, police, fire departments, transit authorities, ems.

Photos and names can be sent directly to the America's 9-11 Memorial Quilts, 9300 W. Terry St., Bonita Springs, Fla., 34135, or the project's Web site, www.angelfire.com/dc/wtc1/.

"This is not being done by celebrities. Every-day citizens are doing this," said Rand, 47. "People are pitching in all over America and that's what makes this a wonderful project."

About 60 feet in length, the largest of the six memorial tributes made of patched-work cloth will be the victim's quilt that includes photos and names of those who died in the tragedy. Five other quilts will include symbols and faces of those who died at the Pentagon, the New York/New Jersey Port Authority and New York's police, fire and emergency services departments.

When they are completed, the five quilts will be sent to the agencies and departments they honor, while project coordinators are planning to give the victims' quilt to be displayed at the museum being planned where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood, Rand said.

"Eventually, they want to send it to the Smithsonian Institute," Rand said.

Rand, a driver safety instructor with the Texas Education Agency's Region 4 headquarters in Houston and a volunteer grief counselor in the Museum District, first became acquainted with the project and the people behind it through the Internet.

"For me, it was a connection with somebody who understood," she said. "Now we are calling or e-mailing each other every day. I don't quilt, but they've included me as part of the project to let other families know about it."

Though most people tend to think of victims in terms of New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, relatives of victims are scattered throughout the world, she said.

"I know of six families of victims who live right here in Houston, and there are probably a lot more," she said. "It's amazing, how many people are connected to this. And how many more are connected by this."

People forget, she said, that Sept. 11 also was the biggest terrorist attack in the history of Great Britain and of several other countries represented by victims at the three crash sites.

More quilting volunteers are needed to supplement the 100 people she estimates are now working on the victims' quilt patterns supplied by the memorial group. But people with no sewing skills also are needed to help buy basic office supplies, such as ink-jet cartridges and paper, and to offset the costs of sending the quilts to New York and Washington, D.C., Rand said.

Volunteers also are needed to help spread the word about the project to families of victims, particularly those who don't have Internet access, she said.

"This project includes everybody who died that day and afterward -- soldiers who are still dying overseas -- because of terrorism," she said. "So many families don't know about this project yet."

Sending in photos and names of their loved ones could help in dealing with grief, something Americans are not good at, said Rand, one of several volunteers and a support group leader at Bo's Place, a nonprofit center for children who have lost a parent or sibling.

"Grief is a process," she said. "There's not a beginning or an ending to it, just working through the process."

Helping to raise funds for the project, she said, could help to provide an outlet for children in area schools who don't, like many adults, know how to deal with the tragedy even seven months afterward.

Rand was among Houston-area family members who lost relatives among the estimated 3,000 to 4,000 killed Sept. 11 who were presented last week with a 183-page book of poems and art that had been written or drawn by Deady Middle School students especially for them.

"These children are learning that we are all connected," she said. "They are learning to care."

But most people don't have the benefit of such insightful teachers in their lives, she said.

"The quilt project is for all those people who, after Sept. 11, came up to me all the time and said, `I wish there were something I could do,' " she said. "Because of the Internet, you don't have to be living in Florida or Texas -- or in America, even -- to be part of the project. These are the world's quilts."

On its Web site, the group members state they are devoting "our hearts, our talents and our steadfast determination" to preserving the memory, faces and names of victims "whose fate was determined without warning and with vengeance."

Though family dynamics and sheer distance had done much to eliminate much contact between Rand and her cousin during the last decade or so, she vividly remembers his energy, his laugh and the fun he seemed to get out of life. It was ironic, she said, that Greene had been a licensed pilot whose adopted father had invented many of the safety items that have become standard in the U.S. airline industry.

There are already two made-for-TV dramatizations in the planning phase about Flight 93, "and that exploitation just turns my stomach," she said.

For Rand, who is also sickened by advertising superficially packaged since Sept. 11 with cheap star-spangled, red, white and blue hype, the Web site of the quilt project group stood out like a beacon of honest hope.

"I am still touched by the dedication of these people," she said. "They didn't lose a relative, but Sept. 11 changed them for the rest of their lives, just like it did for a lot of us. And they are very conscious of not saying or doing anything that would be insensitive."

Rand and the the projects creators and team leaders, primarily the group's president, Jeannie Ammermann, have become fast friends who correspond daily.

"I am really looking forward to meeting her in person," she said. "She's one of 10 people there who have come into my life since Sept. 11, people who have reached out and said, `I'm so sorry for your loss.' "

Unlike the profit-motivated entrepreneurs behind merchandise emblazoned with patriotic slogans or Hollywood's so-called "tribute" films already in production, the idea of people all over the world coming together to make patch-work quilts for families of the tragedy -- the effects of which still are rippling across the globe -- is straight about its priorities, Rand said.

"I love the idea of the quilts and the fact that they are being made by people all over," she said, "not for money but because people care."