Cox News Service
NEW YORK – It’s their smiles that stop New Yorkers in their tracks – the presumed dead looking out at the living, making them pause and reflect.
The horror of the World Trade Center now registers home one photo at a time. Individual lives and dreams suddenly are gone. The ubiquitous missing persons posters that have flooded business walls and light poles in Manhattan have become spontaneous grief centers.
“Each of these people, each face, they were alive; they all had lives, all had families,” said Emanuel Xuereb, a native New Yorker who lives in Los Angeles and was in town for a fashion show.
He pointed to the great mix in race and ethnicity portrayed by the posters. “The rubble has the blood of every country mixed together,” Xuereb said. “I don’t think anywhere else but New York you’d have that.”
He bent over to light candles laid by passersby near the wall of the popular Ray’s Pizza on the Avenue of the Americas. “I just don’t want them extinguished – ever,” he said.
The posters are being distributed everywhere by grieving friends and family members on the long-shot chance that somebody might know something about their beloved. The fliers carry photos and identifiable information such as height, weight, eye color, scars, tattoos and the floor where they worked.
But as the number of fliers grow, the effect is stunning, illustrating the horror and loss, one smiling victim at a time. The presumed dead are captured at their best, dressed in tuxedos, wedding dresses and graduation gowns.
Promise radiates from the wall.
“What struck me is they are all young, my peer group,” said David Sorgen, an attorney who lives in lower Manhattan near where the twin towers once stood.
Pedestrians gather at sites such as the one at Ray’s Pizza and wordlessly linger. The gathering causes more of the curious to stop and view. Muffled sobs are common. People approach the wall and lovingly touch the photos of people they would have passed on the street without a second glance four days earlier.
Friday was a national day of remembrance for the dead, with President Bush looking to comfort Americans with a speech at the National Cathedral. Here in Manhattan, people are seeking tangible ways to react. Some stand on corners and cheer rescue workers as they come and go to the site of the devastation. Some just grieve shoulder to shoulder with strangers over photos of strangers.
Gloria Wiggins, a Brooklyn resident who speaks with a Caribbean lilt, said she didn’t know any of the people in the 100 or so fliers taped to the pizzeria wall. But Wiggins stared at one photo for maybe 30 seconds. It was Nichida Thorpe, 23, dressed in a graduation cap and gown.
“That really caught me; my whole body is numb,” she said. “I have a son who’s 23 years old.”
He just graduated.
“We’ll never be the same,” she said. “Never,” before walking away.
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