When I brought in the NYT from my driveway early this morning, there was a photo of the scar in downtown Manhattan that is the site of the abomination of 2001. It's on the Open thread today, September 11, 2006. That scar reminded me of tough times in the history of the nation and, for some peculiar reason, I thought of my great grandpa, John Coleman.
He was a tanner and worked on the docks in NYC, the very waterfront you can see in the upper part of that Vincent Laforet photo. That bright bar crossing the East River is the Brooklyn Bridge near where my great grandparents used to live in a tenement on Oak Street, torn down to make way for the Alfred E. Smith housing projects. John Coleman was killed in 1880 when he fell from a tanning loft, leaving a wife and 7 children. He had no union, no pension, no health care. His sons and daughters worked--as leather workers, chair turners, silk workers, coopers-- to keep the family going; 2 of the boys remaining single until their mother was dead in 1906.
Before Oak Street, the Coleman's lived at 26 Broadway, in the basement of a hotel. You can see the location on the NYT photo, right where that bright loop of lights makes a turn to the east, near Bowling Green. Three of the Coleman children were baptized in St. Peter's Church, at the northeast corner of the WTC site. Miraculously, the church was not damaged in the twin towers' fall.
So this part of the city, though I left it long ago, is my hometown. My roots.
But it's not mine. It's ours, all of us, the dead, the bereft, the first responders. The whole nation.
My great grandfather's death was not reported anywhere, except to the coroner. He was a blip on the scale of human tragedies, missed only by his family. His origins in Ireland were unknown or forgotten. He was like many of his kind that went through the maw of a life in a brutal city like NY, supplying services to various enterprises, to go the way of all peasants. It is no wonder that my father, his grandson, was a rabble rousing Democrat, scornful of bankers, admiring of Norman Thomas, acolyte of FDR. All of his neighbors aspired to be rich, and voted Republican. He stood with the unions, even though he was a man of the desk. He remembered his people. He believed that right would triumph, that Thomas Jefferson was on track.
The kind of insult that occurred on ABC last night, and again tonight, will get worse. The fear mongering will increase. Expect dire emergencies, threats, and bullying. Our enemies are small men and women. They have forgotten their roots and their people, but they will eventually fail and be cast aside.
Take heart as we grieve. A new day is coming.