When Two Is Worth More Than Two
Anyway, I read about this story earlier this month and almost didn’t post it because it’s already been discussed or tracked on other blogs a million times. But the idea of the talisman, of the item that represents both the intense love this couple had and its loss, is central here.
Perhaps when this story gets told a few millennia from now, it may well have the sort of power The Odyssey (that’s off the top of my head, although I’m sure Wagner or another Romantic wrote an opera or play that better fits this story) has for (some of) us today:
A few weeks back, The New York Times’ City Room blog had a story about Myrta Gschaar, who found out definitively that her husband, Robert Gschaar, died at Ground Zero.
About three years after September 11, 2001, Mrs. Gschaar received her husband’s wallet, which contained irrefutable proof that her husband had perished: one of the two Jefferson $2 bills that he had gotten for each of them. According to City Room, Mr. Gschaar gave his fiancé one Jefferson and kept a second for himself. “They symbolized many things: that this would be the second marriage for both them, that they were two of a kind, that it would be a second chance for happiness,” writes City Room blogger David Dunlap.
Although Mrs. Gschaar hadn’t heard from her husband since he called her to say he was safe in the South Tower, the bill made his death final. She donated both bills, along with her wedding ring, to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
Apparently she told the chief curator of the aforementioned Memorial and Museum: “I don’t need [the ring] anymore. I’m eternally wed to him. I want it to be with the $2 bill.”
Mrs. Gschaar now lives in Ohio.
Technorati Tags:
memory token, September 11, Gschaar, $2 bill, New York Times, Ground Zero, Love, Symbol, September 11 Memorial and Museum
Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed