Lois Ruben Aronow on tue 16 oct 01
I'd first like to thank everyone who responded so enthusiastically to
my urn project. Because there are so many memorial projects in the
works, it has been a little tough getting it off the ground. I'm
going to try to put it together again in the near future.
On a related note, the following article was in yesterdays New York
Times. The article contained a photo of the urn, which is very
dignified (even if it *is* made out of wood...) and bears only the
date "9-11-2001".
With Solemn Detail, Dust of Ground Zero Is Put in Urns
By AMY WALDMAN
If Sept. 11 and its aftermath can be seen as a war between chaos and
order, between destruction and preservation, one small front has been
opened on the second floor of police headquarters in Lower Manhattan.=20
A room usually used for often- raucous news conferences has been
transformed into the site of a somber assembly line. At three tables
sit members of the Police Department's ceremonial unit, in full dress
uniform and white gloves. The lights are low; the piped-in music
soothing. The tables are draped in black skirting, and the room
softened with potted plants.
In a process invested with solemn ceremony, the officers are filling
at least 4,000 small round urns of polished cherry mahogany with
powdered debris from the World Trade Center attack. The urns will be
given to the victims' families at a memorial service at the end of
October.
After Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani ordered up the urns in an effort to
prevent profiteers from selling grieving relatives samples from the
site, the message from Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik was clear:
the urns are being prepared out of public sight, but their preparation
will not be slapdash. Details matter. So he gave the task to the
ceremonial unit, which usually does its work at parades, promotions
and funerals =97 of which there are many these days.
"The commissioner and mayor insisted that each urn being prepared be
given the dignity as if that were the only urn being prepared," the
unit's commander, Lt. Tony Giorgio, said.
Three 55-gallon drums were filled and blessed by a chaplain at ground
zero, then taken by police escort to One Police Plaza. There, they
were blessed again, and placed in a narrow, newly cleaned and painted
room. The drums are covered with American flags. They are flanked by
two honor guards, forward gazes unwavering, who stand sentry 24 hours
a day.
The soil is scooped from the drums into a wooden box, resembling a
small coffin, that the department constructed for this purpose alone.
The box is taken to an adjacent door, and placed on one of the
black-clad tables.=20
An officer scoops a large spoonful of soil into a plastic bag. The
soil, brown with a slightly grayish cast, is unhealthy in appearance.
It crunches slightly when the spoon is placed in it, and it is thick
enough that the spoon stands on its own.
Another officer folds the plastic bag in half, then closes it with a
red tie and places it in the five-inch- high urn, with 09-11-01 etched
on the side. A white-gloved officer carries the urn to another table,
where officers use power drivers to seal it with two brass Phillips
screws. Gloved hands convey the urn to yet another table, where it is
carefully inspected, then placed in a white cloth bag for safekeeping.
Each urn will be presented in a blue velvet bag inside a black box. A
family may choose to affix an engraved nameplate to its flat top.=20
John Keats wrote of another urn:
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe.
These urns, too, shall remain, reliquaries of ashes and dust, memory
and history.
=20
=20
Karen Hein on thu 18 oct 01
thanks for sharing the article. I was really keen on contributing to the urn project, however I could only find info on a memorial version.
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