A prayer, 6,000 times

Art instructor Sandra Lepper’s memorial brings meaning to numbers who died in terror attacks

By Kathy Day

Herald Writer

EVERETT — Sandra Lepper found a way to share her thoughts about the enormity of the tragedy at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with those who come to the Everett Community College campus where she teaches.

When students arrived Monday, they found a wall of the North Light campus art gallery covered in black paper with 6,000 individual flower vials awaiting single-stemmed flowers to represent those who died. By midday Wednesday, the vials were about 60 percent full of flowers of all sizes, fragrances and colors, from large yellow dahlias to tiny purple asters.

"For me, all those numbers were being thrown around as just numbers," she said Wednesday. "They aren’t numbers; they’re individual lives."

She’d seen the display at the Seattle Center, and she’d seen the World Trade Center towers and wanted to do something different that gave each person whose life was lost some identity of his or her own.

So she set out to share that in a way that would "gradually change and be participatory," she explained.

As a cancer survivor who has known about loss, grief and the preciousness of life through the deaths of all of the other women in her family before they were 55, she felt a special need to do something.

On Sunday, as she was setting up the exhibit, she listened to the prayer service at Yankee Stadium. She said it really hit her when she heard the rabbi involved in the service say: "It’s not 6,000 lives. It’s one life 6,000 times."

The display also includes an adjacent wall covered with a letter to New Yorkers where students, faculty and staff are sharing their thoughts. The letter will be sent to Mayor Rudy Giuliani once the display comes down.

Messages range from blessings and poetry to photographs and patriotic essays.

"A white rose to symbolize peace and faith … ," says one.

"As we unite as a country, remember we do not live in the U.S.A. The U.S.A. lives in us, and they can’t take that away," reads another.

Another wall has a list of the victims and a historical and cultural perspective on Afghanistan. There’s also a spot to make donations to the American Red Cross and information about giving blood.

The display has led some to tears, gallery director Lowell Hanson said. "Some people have started to come in and then had to take a step back and come back later. Others have come back two or three times."

Student Rebecca Williams, who was back in the gallery for the second time late Wednesday helping tend the flower wall, said: "It feels really good, very powerful. It gives me goosebumps."

Community college vice president Pat McClain said the response to the display, which he described as "imposing," has been "very poignant. It brought the impact home for a lot of people."

The display has been supported by faculty and staff members who have brought armfuls of flowers and by local florists, including Fred Meyer stores in Mill Creek and Everett, which have contributed carloads full of fresh flowers each day.

It will be open through Friday. Lepper said there’s talk of possibly reassembling it at the Everett Mall within about a week.

You can call Herald Writer Kathy Day at 425-339-3426 or send e-mail to kday@heraldnet.com

MICHAEL O’LEARY / The Herald

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