Fliers of Lost Loved Ones Blanket City

Some are handwritten, others were done on computers, some include prayers and others display heartbreaking pictures from weddings, proms and graduations. Many provide details about jewelry, surgical scars and clothing, anything that might lead to an identification.

Handbills are papering the streets of New York as loved ones seek to memorialize their husbands, wives, sons and daughters who disappeared in Tuesday’s terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and also maintain hope that they might yet emerge alive.

“My Daddy Loves Me,” says one flier posted in Union Square Park. Above the crayon printing is a picture of a man in his 20s playing with a toddler in a pink sleeper.

The fliers are posted on nearly every kind of vertical surface: light poles, subway walls, store windows, and on bulletin boards that have appeared throughout the parks of this benumbed city. A strategy often used to seek information about lost pets and vacant apartments is now being used for expressions of love and pain.

Lives that were once rich with expectations have been reduced to a few specifics that might help with identification.

Brooke Jackman was wearing a tiny barbell earring in her right ear. Joe Hunter, a firefighter, wore a medal of St. Florian--protector of those in danger due to fire. Kristy Ann Irvine-Ryan wore a matching wedding ring and engagement ring. Sal Pepe had a wedding ring of white gold with oval blue lapis.

John Katsimades wore a small cross made of wood on a leather strap. Daniel Nolan had a silver Rolex and Brent James Woodall had a scar on his hip from a broken bone.

Mya Baker, 6, wore a medical alert bracelet warning that she is allergic to penicillin.

The Mural of Hope--Mural de la Esperanza--at Union Square is unique only in that it is one of the largest of the ad hoc kiosks of grief.

“I want people to know that my daughter was important and was loved by all of us very much,” said a tearful Sybil Mallow as she pinned a flier with a smiling picture of her daughter, Annalee, to the mural. “My daughter will be with us always.”

‘Life Is Now Imitating Art’

Even as the city was hit with a hard and driving rainstorm, a continuous crowd filed by the mural. Every few minutes someone would add a new page, a new face, a new set of tragic details.

“We’re here to show respect,” Hy Glenfall said as he filed slowly by the mural as one might pass a casket at a funeral. “These were Americans, New Yorkers, and we’re all grieving now.”

Attached at the bottom of nearly all of the fliers were phone numbers, cell phone numbers, addresses and some e-mail addresses. The poster for Paul Ortiz Jr., who is shown holding a baby, has phone numbers for his wife, father and mother.

The pleas had similar a theme: “Please Help Us.” “We Are Very Desperate.” “Desaparecido.”

While most were posted by relatives, some were the work of companies still trying to account for employees. Firefighters posted remembrances of colleagues trapped when the towers crashed to the pavement.

“We’re here because it seems wrong not to be here,” said Rafael Sahagun.

The flier for Wendy Small, posted on a pole near the stairs to the Union Square subway stop, included the family’s cry of disbelief: “What has been playing out is a Hollywood blockbuster starring Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone and Will Smith. Life is now imitating art.”

Informal Arena for Debate on Retaliation

In normal times, Union Square is known for its thriving farmers’ market on one corner and its immense statue of Italian independence hero Giuseppe Garibaldi sitting on his horse. But now the park has become a grief center as well as a debating arena for how America should respond to the attack.

At the foot of the Garibaldi statue, erected in 1888, is a growing ring of flowers, poems and pictures of those killed and those missing. “God Watches Over All His Children,” says one note attached to a small bouquet of roses.

Once the rain abated, peace activists scrawled chalk messages on the pavement, pleading that the United States should not retaliate. A debate broke out with those of the opposite view. As night fell, a candlelight vigil was held for the dead and the missing, and still the grieving came to post their notices.

“I can’t stand to just sit and wait and let my husband become just a name on a list in the newspaper,” said Julie Mori, as she posted a flier with a wedding picture and a description of her husband as deeply religious and a loving father. “I just can’t.”