United in Memory: 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt Exhibit will be at Brookdale CC May 20-22 BY GLORIA STRAVELLI Staff Writer The United in Memory: 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt, created in honor of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, stretches a quarter-mile when laid end to end. Created as much for healing as for remembering, a hallowed patchwork memorializing victims of the 9/11 attacks will travel to Monmouth County next week as it crisscrosses the country, seeking to serve as a lasting tribute. The United in Memory: 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt commemorating the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will make its first appearance in central New Jersey May 20-22 at Brookdale Community College, in the Lincroft section of Middletown. Visitors gaze at the memorial quilt that has been on display throughout the country. Over 3,000 volunteers from 18 countries created 3,550 blocks for the quilt. Sponsored by the Middletown Township Cultural and Arts Council and hosted by the college, the free exhibit will display the quilt in Collins Arena from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the three-day exhibit. Parking is most convenient in parking lot 6. The quilt, which stretches a quarter-mile when laid end to end, was largely a grass-roots effort made possible by the power of the Internet. The global undertaking of more than 3,000 volunteers from 18 countries consists of 142 individual 10-square-foot panels, each containing 25 quilt blocks memorializing every victim of the attacks on the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon, as well as the passengers on United Airline Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. Most of the blocks incorporate personal remembrances of the individuals, such as family photographs or items of special significance. “It’s just an incredible gift of love — a national heirloom, really,” said Cory Gammel, president and co-founder of United in Memory Inc., a nonprofit organization. “It’s very, very powerful.” “I think it’s going to be an amazingly emotional experience for all of us,” said Rosemarie Peters, president of the arts council, adding that the volunteer group “is very honored to have the opportunity to sponsor this … exhibit.” Peters is deputy mayor of Middletown, which was home to 37 of the WTC victims. According to Peters, the arts council jumped at the opportunity to host the quilt, then looked around for a venue. “The question was, where could we exhibit it, it’s so enormous. They needed 10,000 square feet of exhibit space, and of course you need adequate parking because the quilt attracts a large number of people,” she explained. The group contacted Brookdale, which agreed to host the three-day exhibit. “We felt that Middletown, with its significant losses from the tragedy, was a fitting place for people to visit the quilt,” Peters said, “and we’re very grateful to Brookdale, which has been wonderfully cooperative. “It just all kind of came together. Our feeling is it was meant to be here, meant to work out.” Middletown’s arts council, she said, saw the exhibit as a chance to provide thousands of people with the experience of seeing and understanding how the arts can help people to express and deal with emotions and events that are beyond words. “One of the reasons we wanted to sponsor it was that it is a perfect example of how the arts are for everyone,” Peters said. “It allows every person out there to express themselves and at the same time to process the emotions of their lives and put them into a form that’s more permanent.” The folk art form of the quilt, she said, is particularly well suited because it is so accessible. “It bridges the gap between ordinary life experience and an art form in which many people can participate,” Peters said. Gammel, a freelance graphic artist from Long Beach, Calif., and Peter Marquez, operations manager for a moving and storage company, founded the United in Memory: 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt Program after visiting ground zero in New York City three weeks after the attacks. Feeling the nation was in need of uniting and healing, Gammel said he envisioned creating a quilt similar to the world-renowned AIDS quilt. He returned home and set up a Web site, www.unitedinmemory.net, prompting responses from all over the world. “I was thinking, what could I do that would honor the victims and bring some comfort to the families? What was the proper memorial? A quilt brings comfort, that’s kind of where it came from,” he explained. The response was immediate. “I began hearing from people almost instantaneously. I wasn’t surprised, because I’d heard it all over TV, the radio, that people wanted something to do. There was a need for something positive and constructive to do.” Not just from quilters, but from people in all walks of life, the response came. “Men, women, children, of all ages, all ethnic backgrounds, people who didn’t know how to quilt, made blocks,” he said. Selections were made at random, he said, with people choosing the victim they would commemorate. About 100 of the quilt blocks were made by family members. “Most would choose someone they felt connected to, whether they shared the same first or last name, some women would want to make a block for a firefighter because their husband was one,” Gammel explained. “Everybody had their own little connection.” In some cases, volunteers and families connected via Web sites and worked together on the block design, he said. “The challenge was to see that everyone had a block,” he said. “We kept count. When someone would choose a name, automatically a check mark was put next to the name.” Gammel explained that the quilt’s 3,550 blocks are more than the number of fatalities (3,016), because many victims had multiple family members, friends and volunteers who contributed blocks in their memory. There are also blocks for Sirius, the explosives-detection dog, whose remains were recovered four months after Tower One’s collapse. The 9/11 Victims Memorial Quilt was begun in October, just a month after the attack, by a core group of volunteer quilters who gathered every Saturday at the Long Beach (Calif.) World Trade Center. By May 2002, the quilt was ready to be assembled, a task completed in August when volunteers finished stitching together 142 individual panels with 25 people represented on each panel, forming a quilt a quarter-mile long Start to finish, Gammel noted, the 16,000-square-foot quilt came together in just under 11 months. To date, the exhibit has traveled to 28 venues from New York City (twice) to California, and states in between. “We have so many requests for it,” Gammel said. “I believe strongly in this cause. I support the families 100 percent when they say, ‘We don’t want to forget.’ “I didn’t lose anybody, but it affected me so that I’ve made it my life’s work to remind people this is what happened.” Gammel said the quilt is booked through Sept-ember 2006. His goal is to find a permanent home for the quilt, preferably near Washington, D.C., or New York. “It needs to be close to the location, to where the majority of the families are, because we did this for the families,” he explained. “The reaction to it is overwhelming,” he said. “The families are so appreciative that a total stranger would take the time to do what they’ve done. It’s just a very, very powerful exhibit, and it really does contribute to the healing process.” “It’s not just an art exhibit,” Peters said. “It’s an example of how people all over the world have come together as a community to express their feelings about an event we’re all still trying to deal with. “This was done internationally. The world community came together and this is an expression of their feelings and their uniqueness. That’s what makes it so extraordinary.” The exhibition is free to the public, but corporate and private donations to cover costs and eventually to set up a permanent site for the quilt, ideally near the WTC site, are welcome and encouraged. Contact Maggie O’Brien, director of the Middletown Township Arts and Cultural Council, at (732) 615-2000, ext. 2419, for more information.