The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.

A Final Goodbye at Ground Zero

by Dessa Rodeffer, Publisher/Owner

12 June 2002

Sunday, I visited New York City's Ground Zero.

A second memorial service was being held for families who could not make the Thursday Memorial Service, so the area was closed off for families and participants only. The area was heavy with police and security as bagpipers marched by playing their solemn memorial music.

The boarded up walkway along the buildings that framed the Trade Center area were covered with graffiti. On one corner was a fire station with closed doors until one fireman came out and agreed to let me take his picture. He said I was unable to purchase hats or shirts to help family victims because "the recovery effort is over now."

It was a sad thing for family victims to hear and have to come to grips with - "the recover efforts were over!"

Many victims have not been found.. there are no traces, they must give up hope.

A CNN camera crew captured a woman screaming a man's name through the fence, not wanting to face that the search for him was over.

A block east on Fulton Ave, a ramp has been built for family members to view the trade center site. The ramp was full with families quietly waiting.

It was a quiet procession with everyone taking their time to look and take pictures, view the many flowers, read the hundreds of scribbled notes all over the plywood walls of the ramp.

Pictures of lost loved ones, notes of thanks to rescuers, flags, poems, hundreds of sympathy reminders, as well as t-shirts and emblems from fire, police, and rescue workers and volunteers covered the walls.

A huge laminated Memorial Sign listed all who were lost from 9-11. Families took their time, found names, scribbled remarks by them.

Along the ramp was an out-of-place cemetery shaded by many beautiful shade trees behind a small but elaborate stone church. It was St. Paul's Chapel, oldest public building in continuous use in Manhattan and the site of many historic occasions in the life of our nation.

Built in 1766, it was the church in which George Washington prayed after his inauguration on nearby Wall Street in 1789, after much of New York had been burned down in a fire. A policeman told me I must go inside. It served as the meeting place for recovery workers after 9-11-01. It provided food, comfort, shelter, and a sacred space for reflection, worship and counseling.

It was draped with sheets, posters, pictures, and streamers of doves and leaves and messages from all over the country from volunteers and from recovery workers and families.

Closed to the public, a special service began at noon for families of victims, shortly after I had been given special privilege to go inside.

Rev. Lyndon Harris, associate for ministry at St. Paul's Chapel, wore a chasuble for this 2nd Memorial service decorated with emblems of visiting emergency crews who came to help.

He said there were many stories, two he will share. Sam who walked in, opened his wallet of hundred dollar bills, laid out fifty and left. Then an elderly crippled woman in the Bronx had heard that a man at Ground Zero had hurt his leg. She rode the subway all the way down, talked her way through police lines and offered her gold cane and hobbled away.

A priest came to offer help from South Africa. He had stood up against black oppression there and they sent him a bomb which had blown off his hand, yet he continued on. His message was compassion, forgiveness, love, and reconciliation.

"I'll never forget how many toiled so hard here. It's been a circle of gratitude that builds and spreads. We've seen the merciful love of God and succeeded in building a solid foundation for this church.

In the gospel lesson of St. Matthew, Rev. Harris said we are told we must build our homes on a solid foundation, so when we are shaken, we can withstand life's storms.

"The time has come to offer God our experiences, our pain."