Peace Garden

It was the Irish poet Yeats who said something about the world falling apart and "the center cannot hold".

I’ll get back to Yeats’ center in a moment but let me do a Geography lesson first. Staten Island is really on the Jersey side of New York Bay. In fact two rich English Lords had a boat race over two hundred and fifty years ago in England to settle the dispute of which colony, New Jersey or New York had proper legal title to this land. And of course there is the old school child's joke about a Dutch sailor naming the island. The story goes something like this. The Dutch sailor with a thick vaudeville accent is coming on deck of Henry Hudson’s ship and he points and says to old Henry "Is stat an island Captain?" "An excellent name for the place sailor. Etc."

There is an old sailors' retirement home on eighty acres on the north shore. It sits right on the river on Richmond Terrace and looks across the river to huge petroleum storage tanks over in Jersey. The view is a mess but the old home is now home to Museums and Art Workshops, a wedding chapel, cafe, catering hall, botanical gardens, a reproduction of an ancient Chinese scholar’s home and garden etc. I was married in the wedding chapel, now called Veteran's Hall, some odd decade or two ago. The building was built in 1855. Most of the grand Greek Revival structures in front have their tall granite columns and blend in with the other structures on the grounds that are mainly Victoria, Gothic and brick. With fountains and duck ponds and the perennial need for much upkeep of a very old complex, there is a grand southern ante-bellum air of shabby eloquence to the place. They even have Jazz concerts on the back acreage in the summer.

One of new attractions in the back of this complex is something called a Healing Garden. It goes down a zig zag path from one elevation to another. Some of the rough rustic looking timber cut benches along the way are supposed to be used to meditate and to heal. The Garden is for the loved ones of 267 Staten Islanders (civilians as well as those on duty) who died on 9/11. Seventy-eight of the 343 firemen killed on that infamous day made their home in Staten Island. With five boroughs that make up New York City, Staten Island had the largest per capita loss of life of firemen in the city. http://www.sibg.org/tour/GardenOfHealing.html


The north shore is the oldest and most populated area of Staten Island. Many generations of firefighters mostly Irish, Italian and Catholic have come from the same families. It not unusual to have fathers and sons and brothers, cousins to all be active as New York City Firemen. And let’s not forget grandpop getting his fireman’s pension. I know of such a Staten Island family.

It is most fitting that here on Staten Island and in the peaceful nature setting of Snug Harbor Cultural Center that there is a place for Staten Island families and friends to come together or be alone and pray and or remember those lost on Septemeber 11, 2001.

Healing does take time.

I hope that I do not take away from the name of this healing garden to hope that it is also in spirit dedicated to peace.

In a world gone mad with greed, religious fervor and military might, one quiet spot is dedicated to nature and the memory of some of the few lost on September 11, 2001. The center in the outside world may not be holding, but here at Snug Harbor the center of family and memory and respect for the dead stills holds. God Bless this Land.

Rest in Peace.