The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Athens artist turns his land into a healing place
Artist turns his property into a place to remember 9/11 victims.
On the flight home, Bob Hart turned to his wife to share an idea.
It was October 2001. The Athens couple had just spent a week in New York City to celebrate Nancy’s retirement — a trip planned before the terrorist attacks. When they’d flown in, Hart had noticed the pall in the cabin when everyone saw clouds of smoke over Ground Zero. Hart’s idea had germinated between museums and paying respects near the site, at a chain link fence overtaken by flowers and “MISSING” posters.
I want to build a memorial on our property, Hart said on the plane. Hart, who ran IT for the education college at the University of Georgia and was a longtime artist, didn’t know what it would look like yet, but his wife encouraged him.
Twenty years later, the 9/11 Memorial Trail, which is open to the public, continues to comfort and remind. In a patch of woods in front of the house, the loop runs 300 yards and is meant to be walked slowly. It’s lined with sculptures and the names of victims lifted on wooden posts.
“I don’t want to forget these people,” Hart said on a recent morning with sunlight glinting through the treetops on the trail. “They woke up that morning and had no idea that in three hours, they were no longer going to be with us.”
Through the years, the trail has seen visitors from across the country. Some locals come often. People who lost a loved one in the attacks have visited. One Watkinsville family who lost four members stopped by enough that they became friends with Hart.
“Thank you from the bottom of my
heart for this peaceful place to find solace in all we lost,” Toni Guest wrote in the visitors log on the 17th anniversary of the day her aunt, Leslie Whittington, died. She was on American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington to Los Angeles when it crashed into the Pentagon. Whittington died with her husband, Charles Falkenberg, and their two daughters, Zoe, 8, and Dana, 3.
Solace is what Hart had sought to foster. He was also propelled by grief and by anger at the terrorists, the thefts they committed, thefts of life and safety. Hart, who served four years in the Air Force as a film and TV production officer, felt indebted to America. He had a career at UGA that never felt like work, his expression through art, his freedoms.
“I won the lottery when I was born to my middle-class parents,” Hart said near the entrance to the trail. If Hart hadn’t had the support of his parents and the opportunities he found in America, he figures his life wouldn’t have been nearly as sweet.
It took Hart a while to decide what the memorial should look like.
One night he lay awake in bed, puzzling, when he suddenly had something. He jumped up, found some balsa wood and cardboard. He wanted to make a model.
He fashioned the wood into posts with attached strips of cardboard, which would each show the name of a different victim.
Initially, Hart intended to build the memorial himself, but when people heard they asked to help. A friend had a pair of posthole diggers and
some time. Neighbors dipped brushes into white paint and carefully wrote names on boards. Hart wrote many of the names, too.
Over six months, Hart spent untold hours in the woods, clearing underbrush, cutting the path, installing posts, constructing sculptures, adding and subtracting. He cried often.
The labor produced an intricately conceived and poignant place.
At the entrance, a wooden board displays a quote by author Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust: “Memory may be our most powerful weapon against fanaticism.”
There are 99 4x4 posts for the name placards. The poles are topped with American flags, made of cedar shingles and fixed facing northeast, toward the sites of the attacks.
To the left is a sculpture, made using piled stones, for the victims who died in the Pentagon crash. Another, made with donated granite, represents the New York skyline, with the void left by the Twin Towers. Another depicts the crater left when United Airlines Flight 93
crashed in a western Pennsylvania field after passengers and crew tried to overtake the hijackers.
Hart still comes to sit in his favorite spot. It’s black metal bench at about the halfway point of the trail. When the brush is down in winter, you can see the whole trail from there. He looks around and thinks about America, those who want to annihilate it, and the victims.
As much as Hart loves this place, he loves how much it means to others more. It’s written in the visitors log, which he has checked numerous times over the past two decades and found heartening messages.
“I have been many times and will always be grateful ...”
“The emotional impact is enormous...”
“... my family was affected ... it means a lot...”
Hart was reflecting on what the trail means to people the other day when he stepped toward post No. 83. It’s for four victims who had kin in Watkinsville. At the base of the pole someone had left flowers.
“I can always tell when they’ve been out,” Hart said.