At first, Jennifer Stewart worried that people might get the wrong idea. In normal times, her living impersonation of the Statue of Liberty evokes smiles, laughter, bemusement that this woman covered head to toe in tarnish green could look so much like the real thing out in New York Harbor.
But these are anything but normal times. And now, as Stewart holds her torch high into the evening sky and mugs for the cameras at the entrance to Union Square, her heavy makeup cannot mask her relief.
“People understand,” she says as dollar bill after dollar bill flutters into her collection box, earmarked for the Red Cross. “I think for people to see the Statue of Liberty reminds them that we are still strong.”
Two miles away at Ground Zero, the smoke-and-dust cloud still hovers over the army of rescue workers who spend night and day still searching, at least officially, for survivors from last week’s attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center. As the grim work goes on, passersby on Broadway peer in at the mountainous wreckage from the side streets. More than a week after terrorist hijackers brought the towers down and slaughtered more than 6,300 people, most walk by slowly, unable to believe what they see.
But if Ground Zero numbs the senses, Union Square awakens them.
It began, in the hours after the attack, as an open-air clearinghouse for relatives, friends and co-workers frantically looking for victims. Photocopied posters – a father surrounded by his four young children, two sisters standing back-to-back and smiling, a firefighter in full turn-out gear – sprouted first on the lampposts and trees, then on hastily erected panels and finally, when there was no place left to tape them, among the flowers blanketing the ground.
The candles soon followed, hundreds and then thousands burning simultaneously until their melted wax congeals, perfume sweet and several inches thick, on the asphalt sidewalks. At night, if the wind blows the flames out, students from nearby New York University silently tiptoe here and there, relighting them.
More than anything else on this night, however, Union Square is awash in people.
They stand in a large circle around the Nazarene Gospel Singers from Queens, tapping their feet and clapping to “When the Saints Go Marching In” while a blue-and-white police bus, siren blaring, drives by on East 14th Street with a fresh load of rescue workers.
They sit silently on the park benches, some quietly crying, others hugging, still others staring straight ahead at something only they can see.
They crowd the sidewalks, stopping to study one poster, then another, then another . . .
“Samuel Fields, father of four beautiful children,” reads one. “Worked for Summit Security Services, last seen in Building #5 escorting people out of the building.”
“Look at this,” one young man says to his buddy, his forefinger on Samuel Fields’ smiling face. “This guy died a hero.”
With each passing day, Union Square exerts an ever-more-powerful tug on those who no longer draw comfort from the talking heads on television. In this city where you normally might walk a dozen crowded blocks without making eye contact, it has become the place to tell your story and hear someone else’s. A mere park 10 days ago, it has blossomed into Manhattan’s most attractive neighborhood.
“This is what every small town in America should be doing,” says Thomas Kehoe, who’s lived in Manhattan most of his 68 years and has never, until now, called it a “small town.” He’s herding people to the north end of the square, where “this Chinese guy” has unrolled a long strip of newsprint and is getting people to write down their thoughts in one endless stream of consciousness.
“Go ahead! Go talk to that guy,” Kehoe insists. “It’s unbelievable . . . you’ll see what I mean.”
His name is Xue Wei. He’s a member of the Chinese Democracy Movement, editor of the magazine “Beijing Spring,” and a believer, from Tiananmen Square to the World Trade Center, in the importance of collective memory.
“Every day, we will roll this paper out 100 meters,” Xue explains while dozens of New Yorkers, felt-tips in hand, kneel over the newsprint. “After 10 days, when we reach 1,000 meters – which is the approximate (combined) height of the towers – we will record everything people wrote on a disc and present it to Mayor Giuliani for the city to keep.”
The messages range from the philosophical – “An eye for an eye makes us all blind” – to the brutally painful – “My friend John lies in the rubble.” As Xue walks slowly up and down the line, a young woman looks up from her elaborate drawing of a floral wreath, wipes her eyes, and smiles.
“Beautiful,” Xue says, nodding approvingly. “Very beautiful.”
When will this end? Nobody knows and for now, nobody cares. Bodies, thousands of them, are still entombed only a couple of miles away. And while few if any now doubt that the word “missing” atop the thousands of fliers now means “deceased,” many have come here also to honor the rescue workers as they burrow into the twisted steel and concrete in search of the last sliver of hope.
Sheila Puopolo is a woman on just such a mission. She’s come here from the Grassroots Rescue Effort, a group of local residents collecting whatever they can – chocolate bars, canned soda, cigarettes – for the thousands of rescue workers billeted in schools and shelters around the city.
“I was here last night and got hold of a microphone, but those guys are using it,” she said, motioning toward a group of Christian singers. “I’m looking for someone who can help me get people’s attention.”
Lady Liberty, aka Jennifer Stewart, comes to Puopolo’s rescue.
“I want all of you to walk over to Duane Reade’s (a nearby convenience store) before they close and bring back chocolate bars, sodas and cigarettes. Right now!” Stewart commands her circular audience.
What can they do? That’s the Statue of Liberty talking, for crying out loud. Within an hour, 10 cases of soda and two dozen shopping bags, all full, surround the living statue’s feet.
Lady Liberty thanks the donors individually, even lets them hold her torch and pose for pictures. Beside her, Puopolo looks at the growing bounty in awe.
“People are amazing, aren’t they?” Stewart says.
She should know. It’s been three years since Stewart last took her act out onto the street – there’s more money in performing for corporate groups. (Only two weeks ago, she got a breakfast meeting gig atop Two World Trade Center.) But when she looked out the window of her Brooklyn Heights apartment last week and saw one tower, then the other, go down, she like everyone else thought, “What can I do?”
“There was a prayer meeting in my neighborhood the next evening, so I got into costume and walked outside,” she says. “Quite frankly, I really wasn’t sure how people would take it.”
They loved it – and urged her to head downtown. So now here she is, for the fourth night, slipping in and out of character to thank people as they drop money into her box.
“So far, I’ve collected $4,370,” Stewart says. “My goal is to raise $10,000.”
And in the process, she also raises hope.
On the edge of the crowd, Stewart spots a young man holding a 6-month-old baby. His name is Bud Struck and he moved out of Manhattan with his wife, Claudine, the day after Estelle was born last March. Now they’ve come back from their new home in Garrison to see for themselves what has happened to this city.
Estelle, safe in her father’s arms, is transfixed by Lady Liberty. Her father introduces her.
“Oh, Estelle, aren’t you pretty!” Stewart says, coming down off her perch. “Can I hold her?”
“Of course,” Struck says, holding the baby forward.
Stewart cradles the child in her arms, then raises her slowly above her crowned head.
“Estelle,” she says again, “You are so, so beautiful.”
By now the circle has gone quiet. Some people raise their cameras to capture the moment. Others drop their lenses and just watch. Everyone in the circle is smiling.
And at the same time, many weep.
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