The memorials started simply enough: step outside, light a candle, take a moment of silence.
In neighborhoods all over Manhattan, people have congregated at parks, churches, intersections and fire stations. Hundreds of New Yorkers gathered Thursday in Union Square, where 19-year-old Jordan Schuster had taped a piece of brown paper to the sidewalk two days earlier. It was a way for people to express their grief.
While a woman in jean shorts played the bagpipes, a throng of mourners lit candles and scribbled on the pieces of paper, now numbering in the hundreds. The messages ranged from confused (“Why did the plane have to crash?,” scrawled in a childish hand) to despondent (“This isn’t about winning, we’ve already lost”) to triumphant (“We are all heroes”). They were written in English, Spanish, French, Chinese and Arabic. Others consisted of illustrations. Surrounded by shavings of colored pencils, 24-year-old graphic design student Agnes Dziedzic crouched on the concrete, coloring a picture of an American flag melting into a Polish flag. “I was sick of just sitting in front of the TV,” says Dziedzic, who moved to the United States from Poland eight years ago. “I wanted to tell people that the U.S. is not alone.”
Though many of the grieving stood silent by themselves, some clung to relatives and friends. Washington and Jennifer Pro brought their pigtailed daughter, Samantha, whose first birthday was Tuesday, the day of the attack. They postponed the party they had planned, and instead had the birthday cake alone in their apartment. “We taped everything off the news,” says Washington Pro, whose two sisters were evacuated from 7 World Trade Center before it collapsed. “Samantha’s not going to remember much, but when this comes on TV years later, I can tell her she was there.”
Others expressed their sorrow not with words, but with action. Josh Lippiner spent most of his time at the Union Square memorial site Thursday organizing a massive donation effort. He started at noon and by 6 p.m., when the operation shut down for the day, he had gathered so much food and supplies that both the Red Cross and the Salvation Army told him they could not accept it all. “For the first 20 minutes I was worried nobody would give anything,” he said. “Then all of a sudden, it was nonstop.”
A few streets over from Union Square, local residents flocked to a makeshift memorial at 132 W. 10th Street, the home of Squad 18 of the New York Fire Department, which may have lost at least seven firefighters. Michael Wiener, an actor who lives on 10th Street, said he thought his neighbors were coming to terms with their grief. “Certainly, crying feels good,” he said. “I think a lot of people have not been getting much sleep.” Many of the visitors to the Squad 18 firehouse sobbed openly, and a few took pictures. On Wednesday afternoon one man brought his 3-year-old daughter, who was sporting shiny red shoes and carrying three yellow daisies. She placed them among 20 other bouquets of roses, orchids and sunflowers under a sign reading GOD BLESS YOU, WE LOVE YOU.
Uptown, at the Harvest Christian Fellowship on 56th Street, Pastor Mike Finizio led a vigil Thursday night, naming as part of a prayer list, each of the dozens of victims whose families he had comforted throughout the day. “We’re not trying so much to offer answers and reasons for why this happened, because who can answer that?” he said. “We just want to encourage people. They’re scared.” About 75 people showed up for the service, which had all the simplicity, and all the heart, of a small-town prayer group. As the first strains of hymns started, church members whispered nervously to one another. Then Finizio announced that although several people from the church worked in the World Trade Center, none of them had been hurt. “I’m so thankful,” said Athena Baer, her hand over her heart. “I didn’t know if tonight was going to be a wake.”
