Moving Tribute to Progress (Transportation Week)

Star-Telegram ^ | 5-13-02 | Bryon Okada

[serinde]

I was heartbroken. Eight months later, I admit it. There I was in Philadelphia, a handful of days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. I had taken Amtrak to the 30th Street Station from Manhattan because flights were limited.

New York, the whole country, was not itself. And I had a broken heart.

The stop in Philadelphia lasted 45 minutes. The passengers milled about. Train station muffin in hand, I looked at wall art.

I've been genuinely moved by public art twice. This was the second time. The first was at a bus stop at Boston Common, where a bronze mural depicts a regiment of African-American soldiers marching with their abolitionist colonel. What moved me was the setting. Public park. Bus stop. Famous mural. Wasn't looking for it. Surprise.

In the waiting area of 30th Street Station, there's a sculpture called Spirit of Transportation, a remnant of the city's Broad Street Station, gone these past 50 years. Austrian-born Karl Bitter designed five reliefs for the exterior of the old station in 1895. Only this one remains.

Here the "spirit" is a woman in a horse-drawn carriage. She's surrounded by evolving modes of transportation - wagons drawn by oxen, steamboats and locomotives - from the dawn of civilization to the industrial revolution to the modern age.

The procession is led by a small child holding an airship. Mass transportation by air was visionary at the time. Keep in mind that Bitter finished his sculpture eight years before the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.

One can only hope the public art program at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport's future Terminal D will match this kind of vision.

This week we celebrate National Transportation Week. We celebrate the fact that in spite of obstacles, we have found ways to move ourselves and our goods. Transportation is progress in spite of, Bitter's symbols say. Transportation is civilization in spite of. And so transportation itself is a mighty subject.

And tragedy is part of transportation. On the afternoon I'm writing this, 112 people are believed dead in a China Northern Airlines crash. At least 15 people are feared dead in an EgyptAir crash in Tunisia. And who knows what else. But at the same time, the tragedies will be balanced by millions of anonymous people who will reach their destinations safely.

On the morning of Sept. 11, as the World Trade Center towers crumbled, the Pentagon burned, and a desperate battle took place in the skies above western Pennsylvania, there were 4,546 flights in progress as the unprecedented order came to empty the skies above the United States. On a day when transportation was used as a deadly weapon, the flights - tens of thousands of passengers - landed safely. My suggestion is to see the movie Pushing Tin, about air traffic controllers, and then visualize what it took to accomplish this feat.

And so, broken heart and all, I was moved by the spirit of Bitter's sculpture, because transportation, evolving and, hopefully, improving, is the most positive response we can make in spite of.

Our transportation coverage is expanding.

[serinde]

On the morning of Sept. 11, as the World Trade Center towers crumbled, the Pentagon burned, and a desperate battle took place in the skies above western Pennsylvania, there were 4,546 flights in progress as the unprecedented order came to empty the skies above the United States. On a day when transportation was used as a deadly weapon, the flights - tens of thousands of passengers - landed safely. My suggestion is to see the movie Pushing Tin, about air traffic controllers, and then visualize what it took to accomplish this feat.

These quiet heros deserve some recognition for their feats that day.