The Commitment to Liberty Stands Tall Amid Terrorism

When my husband shot this photo in 1997, he composed the shot purposely so that it looked as if the Statue of Liberty was taller than--and was overlooking--the city. His concept was, “What’s more important? Liberty, or the modern world’s representative of wealth and power?”

Of course, today that picture is not only a historic one but one that truly makes us take a look at where our priorities stand. On that horrible Sept. 11 morning, my husband and I awoke to the horrific scenes on television. As we stood in front of our set, unable to believe what we were seeing, the second plane slammed into the tower. My husband muttered words that I will never forget. He said, “Somewhere in the world, people are laughing.” As we approach the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11, I hope that our country has become more of a nation of pride and confidence in ourselves and in our neighbors.

Marsha Posner Williams

Sherman Oaks

*

Re “Let Genius Soar Above Tragedy,” Commentary, Aug. 28: Michael M. Berger was right on the mark when he described New York as a metaphor for all that is America. The rebuilding of the World Trade Center must command awe from all those who will view it, whether from street level or peeking through the clouds as the old towers did when one approached New York by air on an overcast day.

Certainly engineering and architectural details can be updated to prevent another 9/11 tragedy from having such consequences as those that felled the towers. The Frank Lloyd Wright building that Berger said was conceived as being a mile high was to be 528 stories and called the Illinois.

The greatest memorial to those who perished on 9/11 should be a working building of great significance, not just something that could be seen in Albany or Sacramento.

Ken Russell

West Hollywood

*

Television showed it in greater detail, but those who saw the apparently imperishable World Trade Center towers flame and fall in person--as I did--are surely joined spiritually to those who witnessed such epochal events as the burning of Rome and the fall of Troy. Berger continues the same blind rush to the monumental as the misguided plans underway to carve up Washington’s National Mall with a World War II memorial worthy of Albert Speer. In his call for a monumental memorial commensurate with the scale of the attack, its target and the number of lives lost, Berger neglects to consider that all genuine tragedy is intimate. Architect Maya Lin understood this when she submitted her proposal for Washington’s Vietnam Memorial, a simple chevron cut into the earth. It establishes an immediate, tactile connection with all those who contemplate the names of the fallen incised in black granite.

So too should the WTC memorial be an intimate refuge, its centerpiece the vertical beam removed from ground zero, unspeakably profound and eloquent in its violent deformation and unwillingness to fall. Perhaps it should be joined by something on the order of Hiroshima’s “Peace Bell,” to be rung twice each Sept. 11 by an honor guard, at the precise moment the airliners plunged into each tower. The tragedy reminded a nation that had long disdained it as some kind of alien planet that New York differs from their communities only in scale. To emphasize that difference would be regressive, so let the memorial be on a human scale that every visitor can carry home.

Avie Hern

Los Angeles

*

Please, may I suggest that during the week of Sept. 11 we all hang our American flags on our cars and outside our homes in memory of the loved ones who have been lost and in honor of the firefighters. I know I will.

Loretta Shur

Sherman Oaks