My Son Desecrated Your Son’s 9/11 Mural

Not a nice thing to have to admit, and you have to like the aggrieved family’s ultimate advice — go tag the handball court instead:

Two fathers — one who lost his son on 9/11 and the other whose son spray-painted over a mural in the slain man’s memory — came together Wednesday to try to make sense of the senseless.

The phone conversation between Ernest Bielfeld, father of Firefighter Peter Bielfeld, and Curtis Rushing, father of Avery Prince, the 17-year-old who scrawled his tag “SIPS” over Bielfeld’s face on the mural, lasted five minutes — but will stay with them for a long time.

“Does it make it feel better that he called? Yes,” Bielfeld said. “Does it take away that he did it? No.”

Rushing, 38, called Bielfeld, 74, to apologize for his son and his family and to let the Bielfelds know the graffiti was not aimed at the memory of their son, who rushed into the World Trade Center to try to save lives.

“I told him we apologize. We have a lot of respect for everyone who lost their life in 9/11. We all cried that day,” Rushing said. “I think I eased his heart to know it wasn’t intentional.”

“I said it’s something that bothered a lot of people, my wife and our children,” Bielfeld said. “For us, the mural meant something. It’s like graffiti on a tombstone, as far as we’re concerned.”

In a brief interview, Prince, who was arrested Tuesday, apologized and maintained he painted over the mural only because there was a lot of graffiti on it.

Bielfeld told Rushing his son should do graffiti on a “handball court,” not on a wall he considers his son’s tombstone.

Earlier: We Need A New 9/11.