Ground Zero memorial spontaneous, personal
By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Page Editor
NEW YORK — There were the formal ceremonies, the speeches and the poignant reading of names of the lost by children left behind. There were proud firefighters and police officers in their ceremonial uniforms. There were flags and somber music.
Associated Press
But the true commemoration at Ground Zero here yesterday was informal, spontaneous and constant. They came by the thousands — tourists, New Yorkers, workers — as if by being there, witnessing, they could somehow make sense of what happened on Sept. 11.
Ten-year-old Juan Reyes Lopez's father, Leobardo, was killed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
The 14-acre pit that is the empty center of this place is ringed by fencing, through which visitors stare down at what is nothing so much as a giant construction site. The fence is hung with low-key professional graphics produced by the Port Authority that explain the history of the site and the neighborhood and tell the story of that day.
But it is also decked more powerfully with makeshift shrines, wreaths, flowers and posters in memory of those who died. Visitors clearly want to leave something, if nothing more than a word or two scrawled on a piece of wood.
Many are drawn to an unauthorized installation of street art posted on a construction fence facing one side of the pit. It is the work of youthful conceptual artist Edwin Cass, a New York native who is part of a consortium calling itself Ground Zero Arts. The concept is simple: A large poster with the names of the 3,000 victims listed alphabetically, flanked by giant American flags on which those same names have been inscribed.
Cass encourages people to circle the name of a victim, write a thought or a prayer, or leave some small bit of themselves behind. Eventually, he hopes these heavily encrusted personal documents of remembrance will become part of a museum or collection of artifacts at the site.
One of the flags, Cass said, was donated to his project by the firefighters of Ladder 10, Engine 10, whose firehouse stands opposite Ground Zero. Another flag was given to him by construction workers who had flown it in the pit.
Why do people feel compelled to write something, leave something behind on his wall of posters and flags?
"I don't know," Cass said. "Maybe it helps with closure."
He is immediately corrected by a woman standing nearby wearing a ribbon that signifies she is a relative of one of the Sept. 11 victims. "There's no such thing as closure," she says firmly. "It goes on and on."
Cass apologizes. "Maybe I should say it helps with the grieving somehow," he says. "Thank you for helping me understand."
"That's all right," the woman says, patting Cass gently on the shoulder.
There's no telling how long it will be before these memory flags — or any of the other artifacts for that matter — find a permanent home. New York is still fiercely debating what should be done with the site and surrounding area.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani insisted yesterday that the focus should be on a memorial to those who died, with office or commercial space a secondary consideration.
That debate will be fought out on a battlefield of emotion and money. But for some visitors, what happens physically at Ground Zero is far less important than what the site represents emotionally and spiritually.
That was the point made by Bernice Cosey Pully, who grew up in segregated Mississippi and went on to become a peace activist and human rights campaigner. Pully was at Ground Zero yesterday with an international group of women, many carrying peace banners sewn and painted by school children around the country and world.
While a group nearby read — one by one — the heartbreaking profiles of individual victims that originally appeared in the New York Times in the days and weeks following Sept. 11, Pully and her companions joined hands in a brief prayer circle in a plea for peace and reconciliation.
"To us," she said, "this place represents a tangible hope that one day, we will have peace."
