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.”