The story behind the painting “Unspoken Courage” begins many years prior to that fateful day on September 11th. It begins with my now good friend, Eddie Beban, who worked for the New York Fire Department. He was in Los Angeles attending a convention at the Marriott Hotel, walked into the gift shop, saw one of my pieces of art and bought it for his wife. She loved it.
He then called to buy more art and became quite a collector and friend through the years.
On 9/11/01, the first person I thought of was Eddie. Knowing that he was part of the NYFD, I feared that he might have died in the collapse of the towers. After three days, I gained the courage to call him. Amazingly, he picked up—he was speaking to me from Ground Zero.
Eddie was in the process of search and rescue at Ground Zero. Three days after the attack, bodies were still being recovered. He was so touched by my phone call and told me it was like a breath of fresh air to him amidst the tragedy that surrounded him. My heart went out to him and to everybody effected by this horrible situation. I told him that I wanted to do something to help- that I wanted to create a painting to honor the firemen. He immediately wanted to help and welcomed the distraction. He had several firemen pose in their official uniforms and sent me the photos a few days later.
I started gathering photos taken at Ground Zero from magazines and the internet. The photos I worked from captured the emotion from the event, the paper on the ground, and all of it went into the painting.
One week later, I traveled to New York City to assist with the relief efforts. We were there for only 24 hours but we created a huge American flag mural in only six hours at a church a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. I painted this flag with other artists and it too became an inspiration for my painting. There were American flags everywhere in New York City. Everybody was wearing red, white and blue. And there was no honking at anybody.
The silence in the streets of New York was ominous. There was also a sense of respect that came with the silence. I had ventured into an art store to get paints for the flag painting and things from the store were given to me as a gift of gratitude.
There were many people from all over the world that were working at Ground Zero. I too wanted to join them but I was asked to paint something at the relief headquarters so that when the volunteers came back from Ground Zero for food and shelter, there was hope and unity expressed through the aesthetics of the art.
I would hand a brush to any volunteer that was willing. They painted with me and this brought up their weary spirits up. I knew at that point I was in the right place if I could change a sad face to a smile.
I returned home from New York a changed person. My trip during this time impressed upon me in so many different ways. I witnessed the bravery of the firefighters, the cooperation of so many working together on whatever needed to be done, the emotions of everyone in the city, and the incredible unity that came out of this horrible event. This feeling of unity spread across the nation and even across the world. This is the idea that I wanted to convey through my art.
As I started to create the painting, I gathered all of the materials I had collected: the photos of the firemen, pictures from different magazines that captured the emotion from that time, the paper on the ground, etc. During the very beginning stages of the painting, a friend of mine came in to look at it and started crying. Just through my simple pencil sketch, the communication of everything I was pulling together was already starting to come across. As the painting started to come to life, I knew right away that I was capturing the emotion of this event.
After the painting was completed, I returned to New York to present it at a ceremony at the New York City Fire Department headquarters and training academy. ”Unspoken Courage” was the only piece of art chosen to hang on the three-story Memorial Wall. The wall is a tribute to the fallen heroes of September 11th. The presentation was full of people training to be firemen, the teachers and also families and friends of those that had lost loved ones . Chief Von Essen cried when I presented him the painting.
I came back 35 different times to present the painting to different fire stations in New York, including the New York City Fire museum. Then we made some presentations locally in Burbank, Glendale, Riverside, Victorville and Pasadena. So many of my clients purchased the painting and donated it to their local fire departments. Then the Vice President of Taiwan came to Los Angeles to do a conference. She had donated a million dollars to the relief efforts at Ground Zero. My painting was donated to her as a way of acknowledging her contribution.
“Unspoken Courage” continues to spread the message of the unity that was created through out the world whether it was in Taiwan, New York or Europe. I traveled quite a bit in Europe during that time period and in every shop there were American flags. These helped to convey a feeling of sympathy and understanding for what we as Americans were going through. There was such a close feeling of the world that we all had and that is really shown in this painting.
Even though it has been ten years since the event, you can really feel the impact again because of all of the memories coming back so it is really nice to also bring back the memory of the unity that was so prevalent. I hope that people remember that our enemies are really small, especially when we work together as a team for our human rights. We can win this war against evil because evil is not very big and good always triumphs over evil.
Epilogue:
I am going to New York City this weekend because I want to support my friends there and to see what has been built to commemorate the unity we had. I want to be there to unite with the ones that had the strength to carry on despite this tragedy.
I have been listening to many different stories from that time and the changes born out of such a tragedy in some people’s lives is very uplifting: strength, honor, persistence and hope are some of the virtues that I have observed.
As I quote on my painting: “Wherever man strives, wherever he works, whatever he does, the good he does outweighs the evil.” L. Ron Hubbard
The good has definitely outweighed the evil.
Love,
Pomm
Pomm Fine Art 