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COVER STORY:
Ground Zero
December 28, 2001 Episode no. 517
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Dr. DANIEL PAUL MATTHEWS (Rector Trinity Church): There are a thousand reasons why people come here. Some people come to grieve and pray for the departed and the suffering, grieving families. Some people come to try to get photographs to take home. Some people come because this is one of the most monumental moments in the history of America. It goes on and on. It is both a very spiritual place and a civic kind of patriotic place.
LUCKY SEVERSON: Episcopalian priest Dr. Daniel Paul Matthews, in the graveyard of St. Paul's Chapel, with Ground Zero behind us. The front of St. Paul's has become a shrine, a cluttered holy place no one seems able to walk by without pausing.
Nicole Pope, brought her children from Gainesville, Florida.
(to Ms. Pope): Why did you want to come here?
NICOLE POPE: To pay respect and to honor the families that are left behind.
SEVERSON: Did you feel like it was something you needed to do that you couldn't come to New York without doing this?
Ms. POPE (shaking head "yes.)
SEVERSON: Impossible to look at what is a mass burial site of more than three thousand souls, and to absorb the enormity of what happened here. But the shrine puts faces on the numbers, and then it becomes personal.
Carolyn Sheridan is from New Orleans.
CAROLYN SHERIDAN: You see all the thousands of us gathering who didn't lose relatives, but those are our people too, we're all in a kindred bond of humanity.
SEVERSON: They come from all over the U.S., all over the world, by the thousands. This woman a firefighter from the Isle of Man, this woman, Katherine Dillion, from Belgium.
KATHERINE DILLION: Although I am not linked to Americans, I don't think I could find words.
SEVERSON: She is embarrassed that she has joined others in taking pictures. In the beginning, hardly anyone ever did. Now it is acceptable. She says coming here has not been good for her faith.
Ms. DILLION: It is a struggle to really face the church. I have been to two churches already around here and it is hard, because this is not a work from God, definitively.
Dr. MATTHEWS: Something happened to us on September 11 and for those people who move toward the spirit who move toward a spiritual kind of curiosity. That curiosity has been peaked by this event. There is no question that we are a people who are saying, "What has happened to us? What does this really mean?"
SEVERSON: Most people we spoke with found something here. For some, a T-shirt or souvenir. For some, a drive-by picture, just to show they were here.
A group of churchgoers from Victoria, Canada came at their own expense for one week, just to pray for the suffering. Terry Halcrow.
TERRY HALCROW: Some of the people I prayed for actually lost people in the Trade Center. Some people are just tourists and they're just coming to see this and the reality of the colossal hugeness of this thing hits them because what we see on TV is not the fullness of what you're seeing down here.
SEVERSON: Gabriel Cortez is from the Calvary Chapel in Los Angeles to share his love of Jesus with the wounded.
Kay Barnes came from Salisbury, North Carolina. Her daughter Francine Hockaday from Brooklyn.
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KAY BARNES: I have butterflies in my stomach and I'm very sad. Ever time I see it I have to shed a tear.
FRANCINE HOCKADAY: We took courage to come today because we were putting it off, putting it off.
SEVERSON: Everyone says what they find here is bigger and worse than anything they've seen on television.
Joe and Marge Grills, from Rapadan, Virginia.
JOE GRILLS: I think coming here really makes you understand how severe, how significant it was. How many people died. And how many heroes there were.
SEVERSON: The heroes are still clearing rubble, 24 hours a day, still finding bodies although most are unidentified. They find sanctuary inside St. Paul's, and food and sustenance.
St. Paul's has a history of being a place of refuge. In 1776, when the British burned large segments of New York City, St. Paul's survived.
Dr. MATTHEWS: This place, today, is being what it has always been to New York and America, a sight for caring and being saved. How it was saved this time . . . we call it a miracle because everything burned down right across the street. And this soil where we sit right now, is soil covered with the remains of people who were burned up .in the midst of a place that patriots through the centuries of American history have been buried here. So all of this will be a sacred space. A sacred place.
CAROLE ERNEST: I feel like I am on very, very precious and holy grounds here. And the spirits of everybody that was involved in that catastrophe, I believe are still with us.
Carole Ernest, Staten Island, came here today to leave a poem she wrote about September 11.
ERNEST: Now there are no more vacancies in heaven for God's arms are holding them all.
LUCKY SEVERSON: You know, you're in a sacred space when folks aren't pushing and shoving, and muttering at the police, and the police in return are gracious and friendly.
Steve Patno from Plattsburgh, New York says he drew spiritual strength from this place. Strength he needs to deal with what happened here.
STEVE PATNO: I immediately felt empowered by it, strengthened by the fact that I could at least draw strength from my faith to not really understand it but to just try to cope with it.
Dr. MATTHEWS: This is a religious pilgrimage. Thousands of people are coming to this site almost like going to the Canterbury tales in which people came to the shrine for all kinds of reasons but they are seeking a blessing and they are seeking to put, put their bodies into a kind of religious place to be blessed by it and to bless it with their presence.
SEVERSON: Reverend Matthews says that whatever becomes of Ground Zero, the site, the shrine around it, St. Paul's -- all will become a sacred place in American history.
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USA TODAY: "Many Sept. 11 memorials take root" by Patrick O'Driscoll, Dec, 26, 2001
USA TODAY: "Translating tragedy into history" by Patrick O'Driscoll, Dec, 26, 2001
CNN: "Ground Zero an irresistible draw," September 28, 2001
Los Angeles Times: "Thousands at Ground Zero grieve" by P.J. Huffstutter, Oct. 29, 2001
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