Memorializing 9/11: An Excerpt from “Divided by Terror”
Today, 23 years after the attacks on 9/11, we’re reflecting back to some of the earliest commemorations in New York City with this excerpt from Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11 by John Bodnar. You can also read a Q&A with John Bodnar and Executive Editor, Debbie Gershenowitz here.
New York City
The earliest commemorations of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in New York were initiated by men and women who had just witnessed the devastation and now frantically sought some clue as to the whereabouts of those they held near and dear. Moods of private anguish dominated public expressions of remembrance. Posters attached to walls throughout the city were dramatic examples of this response. These flyers were partially a reaction to rumors that many of the workers at the Twin Towers were injured and lying unidentified in the city’s hospitals. That is why many were placed on walls near medical facilities. Regrettably, those rumors were later discredited by the knowledge that few survived the collapse of the buildings. Posters did not frame the missing in mythical or heroic terms, although many saw first responders as heroes. Mostly they offered basic information on those who disappeared—name, age, height, place of work—along with a photograph. They encased the tragedy in terms of personal loss or an extreme sense of dread people felt over not knowing the fate of those they cared for deeply. At their most fundamental level, they understood 9/11 not as an attack on America but as a stunning end to loving relationships that defined their private lives.
Evidence of personal heartache and mourning were widespread in the city in the aftermath of such a catastrophic event. Candles burned everywhere. Jordan Schuster, a student at New York University, spontaneously decided to tape large panels of butcher paper on the pavement near Union Square where people could “write messages of grief, outrage, and remembrance. At a handball court in the Inwood section of Manhattan, a shrine was created to honor Brian Monaghan, a local carpenter who died in the collapsed buildings. The New York Times began a series of short pieces called “Portraits of Grief” that offered brief biographies of the missing and the dead with reporters identifying their subjects from the posters hanging around town and then followed up with calls to their families. Mostly these vignettes recorded basic details of a person’s life with glimpses into matters of family, work, and leisure. There was, to be sure, a touch of the heroic in some stories. One notice told of Andrew Desperito, a fireman, who in his “final hours” escorted a woman to safety from the North Tower, and another noted that John D’Allara, a policeman, never hesitated to save people or even animals from harm. Even more powerful was the way the stories sometimes exposed the private realm of suffering and pain such as the reality of children losing parents who loved them. One woman recounted how she had given her firefighter/spouse a kiss before he left for work on 9/11 and told him to be careful. Another man explained how he could no longer drive over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge because it forced him to look in the direction of Ground Zero where his wife had perished. The popularity of these stories, certainly innovative forms of obituaries, demonstrated an empathic dimension to public mourning that was possible in a culture less constrained by the forces of tradition and myth.
Evidence of personal heartache and mourning were widespread in the city in the aftermath of such a catastrophic event. Candles burned everywhere.
People tapped the inner recesses of their hearts and souls to perform thousands of impulsive commemorative acts. In the first year after the tragedy many traveled to lower Manhattan to erect improvised memorials that reflected an array of opinions and feelings over how the attacks and the victims should be understood and remembered. Banners, signs, flowers, teddy bears, baseball hats, photos of the dead, and a host of religious symbols such as votive candles, crosses, and angels were placed by fire stations or buildings in Lower Manhattan. Paul Johnson has described what he calls an “altar” erected several blocks from Ground Zero that consisted of a wooden cross with a red, white, and blue banner below it containing the words “God Bless America” and silhouettes of the Towers. A large plastic angel was placed under each tower. At this site a Christian nativity scene, a Hindu image of Ganesha, and a Yankee baseball cap could also be seen. Johnson noted the religious nature of many of these objects but also made the astute observation that this more popular form of American religious belief lacked the coherent political agenda that Americans had used for decades to justify major military campaigns and impart to them the approval of God. President Bush had done as much to launch the battle against terrorism. At Ground Zero the deployment of popular religious icons demonstrated a more diffuse cultural response that invoked narratives and beliefs people held about death. Ordinary people turned to religious faith simply as a healing aid to endure traumatic times and not as a justification for a war.
Seth Low, who interviewed schoolchildren about their reaction to 9/11, astutely argued that in the aftermath of the attacks people turned to “less regimented” sites like Union Square or even a handball court and to unconventional suggestions for commemorating the event. Four months after the attacks, many students told Low that they were ready to move on from what had happened. Some called for building a new Yankee Stadium and higher buildings than the ones that were lost to show that the attacks had only made New York stronger. One student wanted to build five buildings in a circle at the site that would be connected by colored rings with a memorial of some kind in the center. A few students wanted a piece of the original tower put into any memorial to show that New York was moving on and was not just going to create a cemetery to remember what happened. Another young student suggested that “two hollow towers open to tourists with glass elevators and a memorial at the bottom” be created at the site.
In the first year after the tragedy many traveled to lower Manhattan to erect improvised memorials that reflected an array of opinions and feelings over how the attacks and the victims should be understood and remembered.
One religious symbol that attracted considerable attention was a cross formed from steel beams that had fallen in the collapse of the towers. During the operation to clear debris and search for human remains at Ground Zero, Frank Silecchia, a worker at the site, discovered the structure and took it as a sign that God had not abandoned citizens like him in the aftermath of such terrible evil. A few days after his discovery, Silecchia saw a Franciscan priest, Father Brian Jordan, blessing human remains at the site and asked him if he wanted to see “God’s house.” The cleric too was moved by the sight of the cross standing amid the rubble and soon persuaded city officials to put the religious symbol on a concrete pedestal where he could offer services. Jordan quickly became known as the “chaplain of the hard hats.” Whenever work crews felt the need for a blessing or a prayer, Father Jordan fulfilled it. He even tended to the needs of relatives of the many victims who visited the site. Pete Dutro, a tattoo artist who went to offer his services free to visitors at Ground Zero, later said that most people asked that the image of the cross be inscribed on their bodies, more than the national flag or the names of victims. They told him repeatedly that they wanted a tattoo so that they would never forget the events of 9/11.
Today the cross sits underground inside the 9/11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero. Museum text explains that workers engaged in the cleanup “struggled to come to terms with the horrific circumstances” in which they worked. They were particularly intent on making sense of the reality of human remains all around them and the reality of “utter destruction.” The cross, for these workers, became a source of “comfort” and “solace.” Locating the symbol in the museum, however, proved to be a difficult process. Joshua Chadajo, executive director of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, argued that it had no place in a national museum because it did not represent the religious beliefs of a number of the victims. He asserted as well that had the steel beams somehow ended up in the shape of the Star of David, it would not have attained such public significance. A court case brought by a group called American Atheists actually tried to stop the museum from exhibiting the cross, but a federal appeals court rejected their claim, affirming that it was historical in nature and did not intentionally discriminate against anyone.The proliferation of private sentiments did not necessarily mean that traditional patriotic myths were cast aside. On the contrary, threads of traditional patriotic feeling and imagery were deployed everywhere after 9/11, a sign of how thoroughly they had been incorporated into the body and soul of so many citizens. A war-based patriotism was not simply challenged in this public response as much as it was forced to share cultural space with a variety of other sentiments and thoughts. American flags were widely displayed with some surveys suggesting between 74 percent and 82 percent of Americans affixed the flag to the outside of their home. Todd Gitlin, a former student radical and antiwar protester from the 1960s, now felt the need to hang a flag from his window in New York. Gitlin remarked that he took inspiration from the actions of the passengers on Flight 93 that most likely saved numerous lives in Washington, D.C. At “United We Stand” rallies in various cities and towns, people dressed in red, white, and blue and marched alongside firefighters and police officers. The slogan also appeared on official license plates in several states. Radio stations played both songs of patriotism and consolation such as Lee Greenwood’s recording of “God Bless the U.S.A.” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Waters.” At Ground Zero itself, a symbolic flag-raising, echoing the iconic image of a similar flag-raising on Iwo Jima in 1945, captured enormous public attention. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Twin Towers, a news photo of three New York firefighters hoisting the flag amid the smoking ruins projected an image of loyalty and strength in a society filled with emotional turmoil.
Read more in Divided by Terror by John Bodnar.
John Bodnar is the Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University.