Thank Goodness It's Monday #373

 

A TREE GROWS IN MANHATTAN

The 9/11 attacks of infamy took place on a September Tuesday eleven years ago.

We were – and are – in New Jersey, very nearby the World Trade Center site. 

-- Spring 2012 --
 The Survivor Tree
in bloom
with the under-construction
"Freedom Tower"
 

As I’m writing this, the weather forecast for our metropolitan NY area tomorrow on September 11, 2012 suggests the day may be “partly cloudy” but otherwise similar to Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

But is anything else “otherwise similar”?

Certainly I’m not the one to say. In fact I have argued that none of us can answer for any other, the implications and ramifications of that day and all the interrelated actions on all the days that followed being so personal.

On the ten-year anniversary (see TGIM #321) I maintained that, while we all share the experience and/or the aftermath of 9/11 in our collective psyche, no one version of it aligns directly with any other.

That’s the oddity of our human experience.

And yet we keep trying to connect and, I suppose, that’s part of our “human” nature as well. 

Unfortunately, locally, the attempt has become contentious at the Twin Towers site. And the result to date is, in my experience, an odd mix of symbolic and impersonal on a monumental scale.

As many of you will know, the “footprints” of the towers have become cascades of falling water, each surrounded by a bronze parapet recording the 2,983 names of the men, women, and children killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. 

A planned museum there is having difficulty getting opened. Newly constructed buildings that surround the site are nearing completion; most notably One World Trade Center (intended to be known as “Freedom Tower”) arguably the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere by “pinnacle height,” with its spire reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet in reference to the year of American independence. 

All in all it’s being billed as “a tribute to the past and a place of hope for the future.”

But -- I’ve been there. And, right now, though the site does provide much to contemplate, for me it’s going to have difficulty living up to its billing.

However … To me nothing manmade at the Manhattan 9/11 Memorial is remotely as inspiring as what has become known as –

The Survivor Tree
 

The tree was originally planted in the 1970s in the "old" WTC complex, in the vicinity of Buildings Four and Five.

The tree (a Callery pear, I learned by asking) is compelling for being the last living thing pulled from the smoking ruins -- long after recovery workers expected to find anything alive at the site -- and for having grown back from a charred and splintered stump to a full 30 feet. 

Workers freed it and it was nursed back to health when it arrived in November 2001 at the Parks Department’s Arthur Ross Nursery in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. And even there it had to survive a devastating hurricane before it was replanted in 2010 at its current location in Manhattan.

New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the tree is a testament to New York's "ability to endure" and "unshakeable belief in a brighter future."

I agree. And that ability and belief leads me to this observation – 

The tree is there.

And it’s Growing.

TGIM TAKEAWAY: Isn’t growing what we all must be doing; what we all must do as part of our human experience and human nature? 

If we are to find a “place of hope for the future” we can’t be mired in the past. We must continue to grow; actively work at creating the envisioned “brighter future.”

But wait. There’s more. 

I’d like to point out: The lesson and example of The Survivor Tree does not lie in the tree alone. Its survival did not happen by coincidence … or luck … or “good fortune” … or happenstance … or (pick your own “wishful thinking” mantra). 

The tree, and its continued existence and “growth” into iconic status, is more than symbolic. It’s evidence of what can be accomplished by the involvement and commitment of many.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Continued growth is seldom successfully accomplished by individual effort alone. It may begin with some enduring inward fortitude. But that alone is seldom sufficient.

The charred remnant that was salvaged from the rubble needed much nurturing. Without the interest and activity of many, many others, there would be no “A Tree Grows In Manhattan” story to tell or lesson to be gained.

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: Good can come from bad, but it takes foresight, a vision, leadership, teamwork and cooperation. Skills – some specialized, some simply heart-felt human caring -- need to be in place. 

Then they need to be rallied. The project needs supporters and cheerleaders (and these are not necessarily the same). There needs to be an understanding that setbacks may happen, but they need not be fatal. And if and when success is achieved, praise and recognition for the deserving is in order.

How about your brighter future? Starting today -- or maybe on September 11, 2012-- the singular thing we can each do to insure we get the “good” from the bad is to “grow” the relationships that benefit us all.

That’s would be the happiest ending to the “A Tree Grows In Manhattan” story.

Geoff Steck   
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

Parks Department employees
Robert Zappala (at left)
and Richie Cabo
nursed The Survivor Tree
back to health. 

P.S. Rebecca Clough, an assistant commissioner in the city Design and Construction Department, recalled the surreal moment when she spotted a speck of green amid the lifeless gray.

"It had one branch that had one tiny little shoot coming out of it, with a leaf on it," Clough said. "It was like the only glimmer of hope there was."

 

"I think of the way the city bounced back and the way the tree keeps bouncing back," Cabo said.

"It's a New Yorker."