Memorials — 09.23.01

A street corner covered with missing-person flyers and photographs, with flowers and candles banked along the sidewalk below.
People gathered at a firehouse memorial: flags, flowers, photographs and handmade cards covering the brick wall.
A lamppost at a crosswalk surrounded by a heap of candles, flowers and small American flags.
A large sidewalk shrine of candles, flags and flowers spread across a plaza, with people passing by.
People reading the wall of missing-person flyers outside St. Vincent's Hospital, captioned as the wall of hope.
People gathered at a street corner in the late afternoon holding hand-lettered thank-you signs, applauding toward the roadway as passers-by stop to watch.

The original version of this page carried the full text of “Why the Posters Haunt Us Still,” an essay by Vivian Gornick published in The New York Times on September 23, 2001. It is noted here by citation rather than reprinted.

back to the first page