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Any rebuilding of the World Trade Center must honor those who died there.
By Susan S. Szenasy
Editor In Chief
January 2002
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, New York City--often said
to be impersonal and cold--became a memorial for the missing and the dead.
Personal, intimate, heartbreaking, lovingly handmade pleas and remembrances
were everywhere. To this day the nearer you get to the site of the former
World Trade Center, the more these makeshift shrines are in evidence. Memorials
are in our thoughts, and will continue to be, as we get on with the difficult
task of rebuilding.
With these thoughts in mind I watched Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision
(winner of the 1995 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary). As I witnessed
Maya's struggles--first as a slightly awkward Yale undergrad and then
as a confident artist who reshaped our ideas about memorials--I understood
that this young woman's experience has a lot to teach us in any future memorial
making.
From the courageous judges who saw beyond maudlin sentiment--and bypassed
1,440 proposals for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in Washington, D.C.,
among them a two-story-tall pair of combat boots--to the vets themselves,
everyone's better instincts eventually triumphed. And through it all Maya's
"strong clear vision" held things together. That vision was expressed
in her thoughtful poetic words, her dogged determination to get it right,
her sense of needing to make connections to place and people, and her steely
resolve to keep going even when the going got unbearably tough.
The resulting monument is personal yet intellectually satisfying. What was
once called "a black hole in the ground" and a "black scar"
to hide the shame of the young soldiers who returned home to jeers instead
of cheers has turned out to be hallowed ground. It's a place to remember
a buddy, a son, a husband, a wife, a daughter, or a neighbor. The millions
of us who have visited in the nearly 20 years since the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial opened have come away touched by the beauty of the structure's
simplicity and intimacy. Our own faces reflected in the shiny black
marble etched with the names of the dead remind us of our common humanity:
we are them, and they are us. In watching ourselves scanning down the list
we understand that we're looking at the first and last possession of
any person--his or her name. And as we walk on, we realize how the season
of death escalated with the war effort most of us watched helplessly as
it unfolded between TV commercials.
Through the years those who want memorials, architecture, and artworks that
evoke strong human responses have sought Lin out. She says her work represents
a "simple desire to make people aware of their surroundings."
This is something for us to think about when we're ready to discuss downtown
New York no longer as "ground zero" but as a prototype for the
twenty-first-century city. Memorials will be essential to any plans
we make. We need to find that thoughtful, brilliant designer and those
brave judges, and go with the wisdom of public opinion to create a reflection
of our complex humanity.
»
More World Trade Center coverage
Send your ideas about the future of the World Trade Center site to
talk2us@metropolismag.com.
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