The Twin Sculptures

Just as ordinary people were called upon to function in extraordinary ways in the days and weeks after the September 11 attacks, so too an ordinary sculpture played a role in helping the city recover.



Double Check, for many years a bronze resident of Liberty Park one block from the World Trade Center, was buried in the rubble of the falling towers. From here, the plaque now fastened to the bench next to him takes up the narrative:



"The 'everyman' businessman presence in Liberty Park who, before, had faded into the background amongst his human brethern, has been called 'the survivor.' He was lifted, battered yet whole, from the dust and rubble afer the September 11, 2001 tragedy. Liberty Park was since rebuilt, and this bronze man sits again in his original site, bearing scratches and bruises he sustained that day as a poignant remind of hope and endurance for us all."

But this is not the entire story. Directly across the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey, sits another sculpture, a double Double Check, showing him in perhaps his most human moment, that of a silent mourner in the midst of the destruction.



Here he sits as he was after he was pulled from the rubble: decorated with teddy bears and firehoses, with flags and candles and the hard hats of recovery workers, with messages taped to his legs, and his briefcase stuffed with flowers, a small bit of grim humor in the bleak landscape around him.

The plaque next to him reads:

"Makeshift Memorial: Rescue workers in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 tragedy got their only smile of the day when a 'victim' lifted from the rubble turned out to be a bronze sculpture by artist Seward Johnson. 'Double Check' was set up amid the wreckage, becoming a makeshift memorial as flowers and heartbreaking remembrances soon covered the piece. Deeply moved, Johnson reverently collected all the messages of love and pain, cast them in bronze, and welded them to the piece exactly as he had found them one month after the tragedy."



And that is the tale of how a formerly overlooked statue named Double Check, who once sat below the Twin Towers, came to symbolize the dual nature of the September 11 story: its tragedy and hope, pain and love, loss and recovery, darkness and light, a silent embodiment of the worst acts of humankind, and the best.

Wall of Hope, Providence, Rhode Island

In the first year following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the social justice organization, Rhode Island for Community and Justice, coordinated a state-wide community building project known as the Wall of Hope. Throughout Rhode Island, people came together to paint tiles to express their feelings and reflect upon the attacks. Blank tiles and materials were donated and people were asked to contribute a small fee to cover other costs. No one was turned away for lack of funds.

The over 10,000 tiles created were installed in downtown Providence and were unveiled on September 11, 2002, the one-year anniversary of the attacks, as a lasting memorial and a symbol of unity, hope and community.















There is a special section dedicated to tiles made in memory of someone who perished in the attacks.







The state motto of Rhode Island is "Hope". And tile after hundreds of tiles, this theme repeats: words and pictures from the hands and heart of a community.