Warm remembrance
Lolita Harper
The weight of the enormous memorial quilt on display at the Costa
Mesa Neighborhood Community Center today can only begin to
demonstrate the burden of the East Coast attacks nearly a year ago,
project volunteers said.
Two large planks of wood and a massive steel clamp hold the
60-pound flag-like quilt in place for people to come see the images
of many of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks last year.
Nine-hundred and sixty-eight faces, mounted on red, white and blue
fabric by dedicated volunteers, stare back at observers -- their
images emblazoned forever on the memorial.
The Memorial Quilt, one of three constructed in the heart of the
city, will be on display “for as long as they will let us before we
ship them to New York Saturday,” said volunteer Karin Ring. She is
petitioning the city to let the doors stay open as late as possible
tonight, to allow the most people to come see it.
Costa Mesa resident Carmen Dunlea was awestruck by the quilt.
“I think it is just beautiful,” Dunlea said. “It just brings tears
to your eyes. It’s just gorgeous.”
The First United Methodist Church on 19th Street housed the
Memorial Quilt command center for months, while a dozen volunteers
worked feverishly to collect and sew together images of the thousands
of people killed as a result of the attacks on the World Trade
Center, the Pentagon and the airliner that crashed in a Pennsylvania
field. Each picture was scanned and the image was transferred to red,
white or blue fabric. Then packets of four pictures each were sent
out to hundreds of volunteers across the country to create color
blocks. The volunteers would sew their blocks and send them back to
Costa Mesa, where they were embroidered onto the final quilt.
During its construction, hundreds of pictures were strewn across a
large wooden table in the converted classroom in the historic church.
Together they made up 39 26-foot stripes -- 13 for each flag. On the
table, they looked like the makings of a large scrapbook, but once
completed, gave new meaning to the term “Old Glory.”
Not all the victims’ families have been located, so the quilt is
still a work in progress, Ring said.
“We have a year,” Ring said, as she leaned over to straighten a
corner on the massive display. “We hope that while it makes its tour,
more and more people will turn in their packets.”
She looked at the quilt with admiration. Not for her countless
hours of hard work but for all that it represented.
“I still look at it and think all these people are really dead,”
Ring said. “All these people look so happy and alive but they are
not.”
She pointed to a picture of a man surrounded by a half dozen
celebrating girls in pint-sized soccer jerseys. The man, Robert
Randall Elseth, is barely visible through the girls’ arms, which are
raised in a victorious pose.
“The most beautiful thing is that none of those girls were
killed,” Ring explained. “That is just the picture his family chose
to best celebrate his life.”
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