Scott Bacallao of Limerick, Pa., views memorials to those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks (Craig Ruttle photos) | ZOOM |

        NEW YORK — A wrought-iron fence at the northeast edge of Ground Zero is where the living come to talk to the dead.

        Some cry; some give thanks; some reach out. The impromptu memorial that has emerged is as powerful and painful as the Vietnam Wall.

        But here, nothing is etched in stone, and the names you will see are just as likely to belong to a first-grader written inside a paper-heart cutout as to a victim of the World Trade Center collapse.

        This “wall,“ which runs for an entire city block around Manhattan's oldest church, is a thick collage of teddy bears, flowers, banners, posters, bumper stickers and pictures from as far away as Taiwan, Ireland, Africa — and Cincinnati.

        “I don't know what to say. I am speechless,” says Delorise Lasley of Bowling Green, Ky.

SPECIAL REPORT

• The Year America Changed • Tristate events mark Sept. 11 • Special services focus on healing, hope • Inspirational CD, cross of flags mark 9-11 • Crime falls, jitters intensify in airport vigilance

THIS WEEK

Monday: Is Greater Cincinnati ready for a terror attack? How secure are we?    Tuesday: Now, the danger is losing foreign students and the benefits they bring the region.    Wednesday, Sept. 11: A special 12-page section, “Everyday Heroes,” pays tribute to Tristate firefighters.    Thursday: Greater Cincinnatians honor the one-year mark in dozens of spots, captured in photos and stories from across the Tristate.

        Ms. Lasley stands Friday near the intersection of Vesey and Church streets, just across from the former site of the Twin Towers, now called “the hole.” She shakes her head.

        “It is very sad,” she says finally. “But I think this helps people, especially the families, deal with the loss.”

        In three days, America will mark the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Bells will toll. Candles will be lighted. Voices will ring out with sorrow and hope.

        But here, at St. Paul's Church, Americans have been leaving messages of pain and hope for a year.

        That started in the days after Sept. 11, when the church became a base of operations for firefighters, police officers and construction workers involved in the World Trade Center recovery and clean-up. Volunteers served hot meals round the clock.

Delorise Lasley of Bowling Green, Kentucky speaks about the emotion she felt while viewing thousands of items left by well wishers along a fence at St. Paulšs Church in lower Manhattan Friday. (Craig Ruttle photos) | ZOOM |

        “It was open 24 hours, seven days a week,” says chapel spokesman John Allen.

        “There were general volunteers. There were musicians and chiropractors,” Mr. Allen says. “It was a place of refuge for workers on the site, a place where they could get a back rub or foot rub.”

        Posters and banners of encouragement began filling the inside of the church, and it wasn't long before small shrines appeared outside.

        Over time, on the fence outside, promises from strangers were taped next to extremely personal farewells. One, in a child's scrawl across a purple sheet of construction paper, says simply: “I love you daddy.“

        Through the spiked top of every fence post are T-shirts from firehouses and police departments across the country, including a bright blue shirt from the Dayton, Ohio, Disaster Medical Assistance Team.

        Since Sept. 11, the fence at St. Paul's Chapel has at times been so crowded with memorabilia that officials say you couldn't even see the church. The phenomenon has been repeated at several fire and police stations throughout the city.

Jorge Cortes and Bridget Markle of Williamsport, Pa. hug as they view items left at St. Paulšs Church. | ZOOM |

        "You are our heroes'

        While some of the items decay in the weather and inevitably end up in the trash, other pieces are being preserved by agencies such as the New York Historical Society.

        Among the items:

        A banner from a Cincinnati-area after-school program.

        A letter from a young girl in Pemberville, a village of 1,200 in Wood County, Ohio.

        A painted sheet signed by residents in Perrysburg, a suburb of Toledo that's also in Wood County.

        A macaroni flag display from special-needs students in Delphos, a city of 7,000 that straddles the Allen-Van Wert county line in northwest Ohio.

        “We barely have scratched the surface of all of the things,” says Amy Weinstein, historical society assistant curator. “Our mission is not to save every single one of those. We have tried to save a representative cross-section.”

        A third-floor room of the society's 77th Street museum has been dedicated to 9-11 items. From a box, Ms. Weinstein removes the Cincinnati banner. Glued to a sky-blue felt are cut-outs of flags and firetrucks. Inside each, the name of a child is written in glitter.

Renale Killius of New York looks at World Trade Center photos on display at the New York Historical Society Thursday. | ZOOM |

        At the top of the banner are cutouts in the shape of Ohio and New York with a line connecting them and the message: “You are our heroes.”

        “I like this one,” she says. “It is just beautiful.”

        The banner, made by kids from the Medallion before-and-after school program at Amity Elementary in Deer Park, had been given to a firehouse at 48th Street known as the Pride of Midtown, which lost several firefighters in the World Trade Center collapse.

        “Every kid made a card,“ says Medallion teacher Amy Stonecipher, who delivered the banner to the fire station. “It was a good thing. It felt like they were helping other people. A lot of our kids were affected.”

        Ms. Stonecipher says she was also affected, to the point where she was unable to finish reading what the children wrote.

        “I was a mess,” she says. “The whole experience was touching.”

A damaged door from FDNY rescue vehicle, now at the New York Historical Society. | ZOOM |

        Other schools in Greater Cincinnati also sent expressions of hope to New York.

        A first-grade class at Mason Heights Elementary made a mosaic of handprints dipped in red and blue paint.

        “It was nice to be able to bridge the gap for the kids,” says teacher Robin Beegle, explaining that many kids did not understand what had happened. “”I think this helped. It let them actually do something. They had a general idea that firefighters in New York were hurt. We sent them this because we were thinking of them.”

        At Western Hills High School, two teachers created a massive quilt weighing more than 100 pounds that is now at the USA Widows and Children Foundation on East 23rd Street.

        The quilt was built with panels that were sold to students, teachers and parents. The money raised — about $1,500 — also was donated to the foundation.

        “We were left with a question last year,“ art teacher Susan Coakley says. “You remember where you were. You remember how you felt. You remember what you were doing. But you were left with the question, "What can you do?' ”

        Overcome by emotion

        For the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11, the historical society has put together a small and moving exhibit featuring photos and a bit of memorabilia.

        “The collection is building in scope,” Ms. Weinstein says. “But we don't want to intrude on people's memories. Some of it is very personal, such as the missing posters.”

        Back downtown, the missing posters — plastered throughout this city by families and friends searching for lost loved ones after the towers fell down — still flutter on the fence of St. Paul's Chapel.

        Marie Santil of Haiti says it is too much to bear — and she wishes it could all be taken away.

        “It is terrible,” she says, stopping in front of a missing poster. “So sad that these people lost their lives for nothing. Now peoples' pain will never go away. They need to go on with their lives and get healed.”

        St. Paul's, built in 1760, is Manhattan's only pre-revolutionary church. In back of the church — the area closest to Ground Zero — is a small cemetery that is also enclosed by the fence.

        “We have allowed the public to use it as their place,” Mr. Allen says. “It is really something the public has done.”

        Susan Pickford of Concord, N.H., finds the name of her nephew, Christopher Pickford, on a poster commemorating the 343 firefighters killed in the collapse. She has just come from an area set up for families of victims to view Ground Zero and has never been to St. Paul's.

        “They found his remains Jan. 1,” she says, “He was the last of his group to be found. On the morning of Sept. 11, his mother called him at the (fire) station, just before he left and she asked him if he was going to go. He told her of course he was going and his mother said, "Well, tell them your mother said you couldn't go.”'

        Ms. Pickford says the display gives people an outlet.

        “People need this,” she says.

        Scott Bacallao of Limerick, Pa., staring down at a child's broken car seat that is attached to the fence, is unable to keep from crying.

        “That car seat, that child's car seat,” he says repeatedly. “It's just very moving. The enormity of it. It's just overwhelming.”

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