The New York Times journalists started the obituaries of the 1910 victims of the attack of World Trade Center by sorting out a pile of posters of the missing. In the book we have some pictures, the portraits of the deceased, and mostly heartfelt texts to their memories.
Page 233. The morning Bird Virginia assistant at Marsh and and McLennan. She loved getting up at 5 am and take an early bus from Home in Matawan New Jersey, to go to her office on the 94th floor of the north tower of WTC. Most mornings it meant going out quietly while Barry her husband of 21 years enjoyed a late sleep made possible by early retirement.
Happily he is passionate about astronomy and knowing a space ship was circling above on september 11th. just before day brake, he got up with her on this morning. He remembers them both sitting in the garden, marveling at the stars in the clear sky sharing the feeling of starting a beautiful new day. She was a bubbly woman most people never realized when she was mad. Portraits of grief was born september 14th 2001 , three days after the attacks, when a team of journalists of the New York Times started collecting posters of the missing at Ground Zero. It begun with simple portraits already the text ignored race, social class age or gender and tried to link the victims.
Janny Scott wrote in the introduction: ” This started as an imperfect answer to a journalist challenge” The absence in the days that followed the attacks of the WTC ,the final list of the deceased slowly grew into a kind of national homage. In the weeks that followed this section of the New York Times became a ritual religiously followed by the readers. They received hundreds of mail and letters some told of the importance of the homage ,others of the consolation it gave. They were traders, bankers,firemen,directors , managers, window washers, newly wed,future parents, shopkeepers, football golf or basket ball fans.
The book reminds us that most of them were in love with NewYork City. The lines dedicated to them in Portraits of grief are not part of classical obituary, they are sober, informative, sensitive and evoke for each a happy moment in their life. For the Memory .
Jonas Cuénin
