Rahma SalieCentral Park between W 85th St and W 86th StHeart Four · Location 350 · Drawn March 2004Download photograph 1Download photograph 2Download photograph 3Download photograph 4Download photograph 5Download photograph 6Download photograph 7Download photograph 8Video podcast0:00In Central Park, in the Great Lawn, north of the Oval, is a section dedicated to pine trees.0:06In the middle of the Arthur Ross Pine Trim is a perfect circular path.0:11If you enter this path from the Great Lawn's Oval, you want to travel counterclockwise.0:15There are a series of three benches, and the one you're looking for is the one closest to the one-story brick building behind it.0:23The bench is labeled, In Memory of Helen McGerman.0:27About eight feet behind it is a colossal tree with a wide, wide trunk.0:32This drawing was drawn with tape at the base of this tree facing to the south.0:38This is Rahma Salie. She was drawn in March of 2004. Her drawing is counting one person.0:47So at this point, you're already 350 drawings into this project.0:52The drawings weren't done in heart order. We didn't start with four and get to one.0:59The order that the hearts were done in was two, three, four, one. So...1:07That's the alphabetical.1:08And they're in alphabetical order starting at two so that all the last names, the people1:14at the end of the alphabet would be in the honorary heart, if you will, heart one, the1:22closest to the World Trade Center.1:24We wanted to sort of, just in our consciousness of how names are usually given due, alphabetical1:35being the most obvious way.1:37But we got a Townsend, a Zingabat, and a Yoto.1:40That sort of tilts the favor towards at least recognizing that maybe there's a different1:46way of ordering things.1:48It's a problem with no proper solution.1:52Sorry, what's the problem?1:54The problem is just how to arrange the names.1:57The official World Trade Center memorial has run into steep argumentation2:03led by the families of the victims of September 11th2:07who want to see the names not arranged in alphabetical order or in random order,2:12but by the companies that they were working in.2:15But this poses problems to us in that there are people who died in the World Trade Center that were never even accounted for because they might have been working off of the books as cleaners or what have you.2:26So we don't claim to have the right answer to the alphabetical problem.2:34This is just the best way we knew how to embark upon this undertaking.2:40taking. I wonder, I mean, this is slightly off topic, but why, why would they propose to organize2:45the names by the companies? Do you know? The original proposal, which I, I dig on as an idea,2:52it was to arrange the names in just quote unquote random order. And then there would be inevitably2:59a chart or some sort of system where you'd be able to say, okay, my, my loved one is in location3:04a fourth line down and you could find it.3:09In particular, they really challenged that idea with firemen organizations3:15because they have heard everything from they wanted to be acknowledged by a unit,3:20but also they wanted to be acknowledged separately as a different group of people.3:25And man, I respect that as an idea.3:29Inevitably, there's a distribution of emotion there that could be addressed by having them3:36as a separate grouping.3:38I think that maybe I've gotten the ball rolling on the idea that people belong to the subsystems3:46that they were parts of.3:48And that might have inspired the idea that maybe the companies, not fire companies, but3:54but corporate companies are just as legitimate as the definable grouping of people.4:00And, I mean, the depth of tragedy felt by some of these companies is beyond,4:07I can't even talk about it, like losing the, just the volume.4:13Using like 300 employees in one company or something like that.4:16Losing a company, the wealth of your, the real wealth of your company.4:21Losing an entire family.4:24That is also probably at the core of it, is that the family members of all the loved people that were lost on that day4:32want to think about that person being with their friends at work.4:38You know, I have to believe that that's part of their mentality,4:41is they want to believe that that person was with those people in their last moments.4:45And that's the group that they should be categorized with in stone.4:50She didn't die from this. The sky was the limit for her. She was really going up in4:55this world, her father said. They were both ambitious people, but in a very nice way.5:01They didn't try to overtake anybody, but they had their goals set. Sully was seven months5:06pregnant with the couple's first child and was looking forward to motherhood, her father← Location 349Heart Four · Location 350Location 351 →
