This column first appeared in September 2011.
We passed another sad anniversary last week as the first decade after the 9-11 terrorist attacks came to a close. The airwaves were full of tributes and once again we watched as many of the smiling, friendly faces of the almost 3,000 victims scrolled mournfully past on our TV screens. Many of them among the bravest men and women the world has ever known; the rescue workers, police and firefighters. Heroes who charged into the buildings as everyone else was charging out. Like most Americans, I can hardly think about that day and those people without choking back a tear. This loss to humanity can never be calculated, to say nothing of the loss of material goods, religious freedom and the human psyche. But what of the loss to history?
When those hellish planes plowed into the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, the attacks destroyed tens of thousands of personal records, irreplaceable historical documents and priceless art. Among the tons of rubble and ash were letters written by Helen Keller, 40,000 photographic negatives of John F. Kennedy taken by the president’s personal cameraman, sculptures by Alexander Calder and Auguste Rodin and the 1921 agreement that created the agency that built the World Trade Center. All of them and more, lost forever.
The true extent of the loss will never be known because in most cases, the collection inventories were destroyed along with the items themselves. A decade later, historians and archivists alike compare the task of reconstructing viable inventories of the lost items to trying to complete a crossword puzzle without any clues. When hijackers flew their jetliners into the twin towers, the buildings collapsed onto the rest of the complex, which included three smaller office buildings, a Marriott hotel, U.S. Customs office and a skyscraper known as 7 World Trade Center located just north of the towers.
The towers were home to more than 430 companies, including law firms, manufacturers and financial institutions. Twenty-one records libraries were destroyed, including dozens of federal, state and local government agencies as well as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The C.I.A. had a secret office on the 25th floor of 7 World Trade Center, which also housed the city’s emergency command center and an outpost of the U.S. Secret Service.
The Cantor Fitzgerald brokerage, where more than 650 employees were killed, owned a trove of paintings, drawings and sculptures, including an original cast of Rodin’s “The Thinker,” of which only fragments and broken shards were ever recovered. The Kennedy negatives, by photographer Jacques Lowe, had been stowed away in a fireproof vault at 5 World Trade Center, a nine-story building in the complex. They did not survive the collapse. The U.S. Customs Service library in 6 World Trade Center held a collection of documents related to U.S. trade dating back to the 1840s. It must also be noted that countless classified and confidential documents also disappeared at the Pentagon, where American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into it on 9/11.
Among the artifact collection losses was one that hit me particularly hard. Lost in the collapse were nearly 900,000 objects excavated from the Five Points neighborhood of lower Manhattan, a legendary working-class slum of the 19th century. From the Five Points sprang many of the famed “Gangs of New York” hoodlums who would go on to change the world, not in a good way, with homegrown gangsters like Al Capone. The Five Points was also the flashpoint for the Civil War draft riots that terrorized the city for four days in the summer of 1863 resulting in the deaths of at least 120 civilians with an estimated 2,000 more injured. The riots remains the largest civil insurrection in American history apart from the Civil War itself.
But to me, the greatest loss (apart from civilians) of the 9-11 attacks were the archives of the Helen Keller International organization, whose offices burned up when its building, a block from the trade center, was struck by debris. Only two books and a bust of Helen Keller survived the destruction. The bust, covered in World Trade Center soot and scorched by fire, can be seen at the start of this article. The terra cotta statue of Keller had been presented to her on a visit to Japan in 1937. It is now perched over the reception desk in HKI’s new Midtown Manhattan headquarters. Ironically the bust sits near a photograph of the destroyed twin towers as seen through a broken window of HKI’s old offices hanging on a nearby wall.
In 1925, a survivor of the German U-boat attack on the RMS Lusitania 10-years before, wealthy New York wine merchant George Kessler, established the “Permanent Blind Relief War Fund for allied soldiers and sailors.” After the war, the organization became the American Braille Press, which, eventually became the American Foundation for Overseas Blind, and finally, in 1975, Helen Keller International.
Helen Keller became the patron saint of the organization after Kessler asked for her help with his foundation to support those blinded by war. She naturally agreed and soon joined the board of directors. Ms. Keller served as ambassador, cheerleader and inspirational leader for over 40 years until her death in 1968. Seven years later the organization renamed itself in her honor.
Keller’s importance to HKI was reflected in it’s archives. Over the years, HKI collected autographed first editions of Helen Keller’s many books, as well as one-of-a-kind correspondence, photographs, and personal memorabilia. Her work for the organization was meticulously documented, especially her duties as a member of the board of directors. Sadly, the scope and breadth of the archive can today only be imagined for the only complete copies of the inventory were destroyed along with the archive itself in the terrorist attacks. The inventory had only recently been compiled over the summer by an intern whose duty it was to chronicle some 85 years of documents, annual reports, correspondence, minutes, speeches, and other irreplaceable historical materials in a central report. The entire institutional memory of the organization through it’s many incarnations, and thus the only documentary witness to HKI’s many accomplishments, was lost that day.
The heart of the collections was a selection of photographs, books, and letters that once belonged to Helen Keller herself. Included was a signed first edition of Helen Keller’s 1936-37 Journal, a signed first edition of her first book, The Story of My Life, and many rare pamphlets. There were original photographs of Helen Keller with Kessler, as well as images from her many travels to Japan, Greece, Italy, France, England, South Africa, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Israel — not to mention a collection of photographs of Ms. Keller with every living President during her lifetime from 1880 to 1968.
After overcoming the almost inconceivable hardship of being both blind and deaf, Keller devoted her life to humanitarian causes. She traveled widely and met with world leaders and every president from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon Johnson, advocating on behalf of organizations helping the blind. Although Helen Keller books, letters, photographs, and ephemera are sometimes available on the secondary market, the collection had more than monetary value for HKI. They represented a priceless collection of Helen’s observations and perspectives during the rise of fascism in Europe throughout the years of World War II.
Less than a week after the terrorist attacks, HKI set up three temporary offices in New York and New Jersey. Along with all of their office equipment, records, and the archive itself, HKI also lost $1.4 million in donated surgical supplies and eyeglasses. Luckily, no HKI associate lives were lost in the tragedy, but as can be imagined, the entire organization had been shaken to the core. Through its network of donors and granting agencies, HKI raised millions of dollars very quickly. It remains a point of pride that not a single HKI program was disrupted due to the attacks.
However, not all of the donations were monetary. Three weeks after the disaster, the company received a package from Bangladesh with this letter: “I suspect that the archives and the library we lost when our headquarters was destroyed contained many irreplaceable items, some probably connected with Helen Keller herself. As a small start to building a new library, please accept this book as a personal contribution to that process.”
The package contained a signed first edition of Keller’s memoir, Midstream, The Story of My Later Life. Other personal donations followed. The American Foundation for the Blind, the keeper of Helen Keller’s papers, gave a portfolio of photographs. Private donors worldwide sent more of Keller’s books and several letters. Today the modest HKI archive fills a small glass bookshelf outside the main conference room in their new office. It may be a shadow of its former self, but it’s a start. And just like the lives of the brave men and women lost at Ground Zero that day, the loss of the original Helen Keller archive is often referenced in the accompanying letters and notes found inside the donations. It is still a tender wound, indeed a wound that may never heal.
As for me, when I think of the evil that men do in the name of religion, I visualize the insanity of March of 2001 when the Taliban blew up the 1700-year-old Buddhas carved into the mountains of Afghanistan. Originally, the Taliban attempted to destroy the religious icons with anti-aircraft guns and tank fire, which had little affect. They then drilled holes into the torsos of the behemoths, packed a truckload of dynamite inside and blew them off the face of the earth. All while the news cameras rolled tape. Little did I realize that just six months later, fragments of this very same group would strike a similar blow in my own backyard.
As an American and a historian of sorts, I will never forget but shall strive hard to forgive. Someday. Perhaps Maya Angelou spoke best for all of us when she said, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” God Bless the United States of America.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
