Dan's Papers - October 26, 2007 - Local Monuments to Those Americans Who Died Heroically

There was quite a bit in the news this past week about terrorism. In Pakistan, two bombs exploded in a crowd of an estimated twenty thousand people who were on hand to welcome home former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto from her self-imposed exile. About 150 people died. Since Bhutto had returned home to form an alliance with the current Prime Minister Mushariff to fight terrorism, the motive seemed clear enough.

At the Atlanta International Airport, as a test, a federal agency tried to get bombs in suitcases through security ten times. Six of the ten times they succeeded.

And in Washington, Michael Mukasey, the new nominee to replace Roberto Gonzales as Attorney General was grilled by the senate. A wide array of both Democrats and Republicans say they will vote to confirm him. During the grilling, he was asked repeatedly about whether or not his office would oppose the administration in condoning the torturing of people who get caught in the act of planning a terrorist attack. He hedged his bets. He said he abhorred torture, but wouldn't be pinned down to define what it was. He did say that the President's decisions in trying to protect us from terrorists could under certain circumstances temporarily trump what is in our Constitution or Bill of Rights.

Finally, there was a big development here on eastern Long Island involving one of the half dozen monuments dedicated to innocent people with local connections who have died in terrorist attacks.

One of these monuments is to Linda Gronlund, the Sag Harbor resident who found herself on United 93 out of Newark bound for San Francisco on September 11, 2001. Along with more than a hundred others, she died when the battle for control of the cockpit, conducted by the passengers against the terrorists, resulted in their airplane crashing into the ground in Pennsylvania instead of turning around and plowing into the White House, which had been its intended destination.

The monument dedicated to her is the naming of a Suffolk County Park in her honor. It is located at Barcelona Neck off the Sag Harbor Turnpike between East Hampton and Sag Harbor and it is called the Linda Gronlund State Park. There is a public golf course there. And one of the benches in the park bears a plaque with her name, noting that she was the Magna Cum Laude graduate of Southampton College in 1976.

There is a monument to Alex Lowenstein, the 21-year-old Montauk surfer and Syracuse University student who died aboard Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988 when the aircraft exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. Libyan extremists took responsibility for that attack. The government of Libya subsequently paid out $2 million to the relatives of each passenger who died. But that did not happen until fifteen years later. This monument, made of stone, is located just west of the Atlantic Terrace Motel in Montauk. That was Alex's favorite surfing beach.

There is a monument to Vinny Danz in Southampton. Danz was a New York City fireman originally from Southampton who died on 9/11 inside one off the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. His monument is that he has a street named after him. It is a Trustee road that connects Meadow Lane to the ocean beach in that town.

Finally, there are two monuments to those who were on board TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996. That aircraft was just 80 miles out of New York City when it exploded in the air just offshore of East Moriches, Long Island killing all on board. Although the government claims that the explosion occurred because of a loose wire and spark in the fuel tank, others say this plane was shot down by a guided missile, and that they saw a flicker of light rising up from the sea and hitting the airplane, subsequently causing it to explode. There are pictures and videotapes of it that were taken on that dark night.

The first of the monuments, built within six months of the crash, is a garden park in downtown East Moriches that features a brick walkway with the name of a victim on each brick. The second monument, a more elaborate affair, is on the barrier beach off East Moriches at Smith Point Park on the Fire Island seashore. It was built by the State just five years ago after a competition and consists of a curved stone wall with the names of all the victims on it, walkways, railings, flags and trellises. It was originally built on low ground. It has since been moved to higher ground with a view of the sea and the bay.

This week, the news about a monument to the victims of terror is about a field of sculptures designed and built by Suse Lowenstein, who lives with her husband Peter on East Lake Drive in Montauk and is the mother of Alex.

As mentioned earlier, there is a memorial to Alex Lowenstein next to the Atlantic Terrace Motel in Montauk. But the grief by the Lowensteins resulted in something much more than that.

Suse Lowenstein, born in Germany and raised in the United States, was a painter in the 1960s who, after a visit to Colombia, South America, began a career as a sculptor. She and her husband lived in a New Jersey suburb during those years, and Suse sculpted large white plaster pieces, mostly of nudes. She had many gallery shows in New York City and was quite a success.

By the time of the Lockerbie disaster, the Lowensteins had bought a house on East Lake Drive in Montauk, where her two sons had become avid surfers during vacations in the summertime.

Then came the Lockerbie disaster in October of 1988. And Suse Lowenstein began creating some new sculptures.

These were still nudes of women, but they were in grey or brown and were made to represent the grieving mothers of those who died in Lockerbie. There was a show of eight of them at the Elaine Benson Gallery in August of 1989.

But Suse Lowenstein would not stop making these sculptures. The pieces were now life-size. And as she and her husband and the families of some of the others who lost relatives in Lockerbie began to get in touch with one another, Suse Lowenstein began inviting the mothers of the children lost to her studio, first in New Jersey and later in Montauk. She told them of her intentions. She wanted to talk to them about their mutual sadness. And then she wanted to ask them to remember the moment they first learned of their loss and how that stripped them emotionally naked. Could they express that moment of grief? They were all women. Could they strip naked physically, so she could sculpt them in that moment of emotionally naked grief? They did. The sculptures resulting are of these women in all their individuality, in this shocking state of the beginning of their grief.

It has been almost twenty years since Suse Lowenstein made the first of what has turned out to be seventy-six life-size sculptures of seventy-six mothers expressing this great sorrow. Together, these seventy-six pieces, known as Dark Elegy, make one of the most powerful displays of grief imaginable. They have been displayed at various galleries over the years. They are not for sale. They are currently outdoors at the Lowenstein home on East Lake Drive in Montauk.

Now, it appears, they may go to a permanent home in Washington, DC.

This past week, Congressman Tim Bishop (Southampton-D), introduced a bill to have the Department of Parks find a suitable site where they can be accepted, cast in bronze and put on permanent display in that city as a testament to the horrors and senselessness of terror, and to victims of terror of all sorts around the world.

If a counterpart in the Senate can be found to propose a similar bill and if it can be passed into law and a location found, the Lowensteins will use the $2 million they have received from the Government of Libya to pay for the casting.

In the meantime, if you want to see this exhibit in Montauk, feel free to stop by the Lowenstein home on East Lake Drive any Saturday between 10 a.m. and noon. Arrange this by contacting them on the website www.darkelegy103.com.

Coincidental to all of this was the screening of a film called To Die in Jerusalem at the Hamptons International Film Festival this past weekend. Written and directed by Hilla Medalia, it documents the search one woman took in trying to find, and then successfully finding, the mother of the young female Palestinian terrorist, who in a random attack in Israel, killed her Israeli daughter. As you might imagine, what she learns when she finds this woman does not provide a satisfactory explanation.