CHICAGO (UPI) -- An Iraqi-American near Chicago is overseeing the finishing of the Pentagon memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Abe Yousif's Bucthel Metal Finishing Corp., has less than a year to complete grinding, finishing and polishing three long arcing castings that will contain 184 seats, one for each person who died when American Airlines Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon's west wall.

Each seat will bear the name of the 125 people who died in the building and 59 aboard the flight, The Washington Post reported.

Yousif, a 54-year-old Assyrian Christian, told the newspaper he left Baghdad in 1979 at age 24, and he hasn't been back.

"Being an Arab-American, you feel so sorry," Yousif said. "It's a feeling like you can contribute something good to this horrible thing if you can make (the benches) look beautiful."

The $23 million project is being funded by private donations to the Pentagon Memorial Fund, which is $8 million short before the memorial's scheduled unveiling on Sept. 11, 2008, the report said.