Special Report - Union Square

New York Diary: Union Square
September 19, 2001
by John Bloom

NEW YORK (UPI) -- And the hordes still come.

They file through Union Square, which has become a People's Shrine to the Missing. They pause before every poster, studying every face, even on the day when the "missing" have officially become the "presumed dead."

The whole park has become a secular outdoor cathedral. People had to have some place to go, some specific location to anchor their restless grief, and so it sprang up organically. It reminds me of the highway altars of the Hispanic Southwest, where traffic fatalities are marked with candles, pictures, flowers, poems and crosses, but it also evokes memories of the hippie gatherings of the sixties, complete with graffiti peace signs, poems taped to fences, Hare Krishna musicians, and political posters quoting everyone from the Dalai Lama to Adolf Hitler.

Like the World Trade Center disaster itself, it's confused and confusing, a place where you can hear West Virginia mountain fiddlers one moment (their mournful but fast-paced music is oddly comforting), Christian evangelists the next (their platitudes are not drawing crowds), and then see an enraged zealot speaking only for himself, frightening people from park benches with the intensity of his hatred.

The overall feeling, though, is muted, grim and reverent, and it all revolves around the pictures. They started out as informational posters, genuine appeals by families searching for missing members, duplicated by the thousands at all-night Kinko's copy centers. But they've long since evolved into sacred artifacts, many of them now splattered with symbolic red paint or arranged into collages held together by the melted wax of extinguished candles. At any moment, the tiniest detail from a poster can blindside you, stop you in your tracks.

"Gold rope neck chain with rectangle charm that says 'Jesus Is Lord.'" (Isaias Rivera, 110th floor, Tower 1, CBS transmitter department, about 35, smiling, hugging his wife)

They're never what you expect. They violate every rule of police identification. The people are all smiling, for one thing. When Americans have their pictures taken, they smile broadly, and for some reason the families chose the happiest possible times-- wedding pictures, graduations, family barbecues--for their appeals. A passport photo would likely result in quicker identification, but you get the impression these are not about identification at all. In many of them the missing person is surrounded by others--hugging this one, leaning against that one- -which further confuses the stranger encountering the poster for the first time.

"Tattoos--dolphin on foot, turkey on hip." (Noell Maerz, age 29, bright white teeth, grinning, dressed in a tuxedo)

Bright white teeth--perfect teeth. Tuxedoes that were only worn once. Office parties. Birthday parties. Bar mitzvahs. Vacation snapshots. Scott O'Brien (101st floor, Tower 1), wearing a T-shirt from Curacao, grinning ironically and holding his hands up like he's being arrested. Or maybe he's showing the size of the fish he caught--it's hard to tell what the joke is. All you can see is that he's so so happy.

"Tattoo of dragon down middle of back with Chinese character in red; tribal tattoo along center lower back above tailbone." (Casey Cho, thirtyish, 99th floor, Tower 1, holding a white fluffy dog)

Union Square has always been a place of death and conflict. Two hundred years ago it was a potter's field, where nameless paupers were buried without markers. Later it was the scene of demonstrations, marches, labor riots, always the locus of emotions out of joint.

"Torn right earlobe, split right fingernail." (Tawana Griffin, 30, 101st floor, Tower 1, smiling in a "Calvin" T-shirt)

The largest groupings of posters are laid directly on the pavement in front of a statue of George Washington on horseback. The statue is immersed in graffiti: "LOVE LOVE LOVE," rally posters, crosses, a giant peace flag hanging from a pole that's been taped to Washington's right hand, as though he's been injured there. It's impossible to say whether the intention is to deface the statue or to celebrate it. The park also contains a statue of Lincoln, which would seem the more logical choice for a time of national grief, and yet Lincoln remains pristine, untouched.

"Kenneth Cole briefs size 32, diamond stud in left earlobe." (Eugene Clark, 47, 102nd floor, Tower 2, grinning)

French President Jacques Chirac shuffles quietly past me as I stand near Washington's statue. There's a smattering of applause as he places a red, white and blue spray of flowers in front of the garish monument and then steps back, bowing from the waist and remaining there for about two minutes. He leaves without saying anything, and again there is applause. A third statue in the park--of the Marquis de Lafayette, America's most famous French friend during the revolution--stands twenty yards away, unnoticed.

"Very distinctive thick brown discolored toenails." (Ramon Grijalvo, 58, Filipino, 4-11, 130, 26th floor, Tower 1, smiling)

As the days have passed, without any more survivors being found and with decreasing trust in miracles, the shrines have spread farther and farther north through the park. There are oddities now--a Sonny Bono doll taped to a gate, the lyrics to Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" scratched out in Crayon, a chain of T-shirts tied together at the sleeves, each with a patriotic slogan or expression of grief hand-painted on the front.

"Wife is pregnant with twins and due next week. Also has a two-year-old son who just said his first sentence: 'I want my daddy.'" (Steve Russin, late twenties, Tower 1, blurry, smiling and tuxedoed)

Many of the posters now have actual frames. Jeff Fox, the Chief Financial Officer of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, 89th floor, Tower 2, can be seen in his tux, a beautiful young woman (his daughter?) leaning on his right shoulder and smiling. Kristy Ann Irvine/Ryan, 30, 104th floor, Tower 2, is radiant in her formal wedding gown. A local photographer has asked many of the grieving tourists to pose for pictures, and those are posted as well, showing the faces we once associated with the homeless, the dispossessed, the war-torn from abroad.

"Lots of earrings." (Brooke Jackman, 23, Tower 1, beaming)

After a while it becomes sensory overload. You can't look at them all. You wonder how many others there are, with families that didn't live close enough to New York to put up posters in time.

"Gold necklace with jade pig, New York University graduation ring." (Doris Eng, 30, manager of Windows on the World, 107th floor, Tower 1)

On Day 9, a young woman has a new poster. She kneels and carefully secures it to a fence with masking tape as a drummer raps a mournful dirge in the background.

"Youthful 40, short bob cut with bangs." (Joyce Carpeneto, 40, 83rd floor, Tower 1, relaxing in an Adirondack deck chair with a big beauty-queen smile)

You wonder how long it can go on, this invocation of ghosts. "Birthmark in the shape of Puerto Rico on hand." (Nestor Cintron III, 27, 104th floor, Tower 1, wearing a tux with a carnation in his lapel, smiling)

You wonder how many people ARE recognized, by people who knew them in college, or at another job, or passed them in a hallway long ago. You can't help but wonder what happened to Francis Trombino, better known as Joe or Jack, 68, a Brinks Guard working in the Bank of America parking bay at Tower 1. "If you have seen him or you are the police officer who asked him to move the van . . ."

He's gray, balding, surrounded by family, relaxed, wearing a golf shirt. If you look at his picture long enough, you feel like you know him. And then you have to move on, knowing that you'll forget his name but you won't forget.

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