‘Dear Hero’ cards, drawings delivered to NYC for display in Sept. 11 museum

By JOHN JOHNSTON

CINCINNATI (AP) — Tanya Hoggard started collecting letters, cards and artwork sent by children to New York City firefighters and rescue workers eight years ago in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

As a volunteer at ground zero, the Oakley resident saw the power of the drawings and messages, many of them simple but heartfelt. She saw how they put smiles — if ever so briefly — on the faces of the weary workers searching the World Trade Center rubble.

She eventually collected nearly 3 tons of such tributes and couldn’t bear to throw any of it away. For years, she was unsure what would become of it all.

Now, the long search for a suitable home for the collection is officially ended. On Tuesday in a downtown office building, a two-man crew carefully began packing the items.

They were trucked Wednesday to New York City, where they will eventually be displayed at the national Sept. 11 memorial and museum at the World Trade Center.

For Hoggard, 42, this is a bittersweet time.

“I’m happy that [the collection] is going to the right place,” she says, “but I’m really nervous. It’s so important to me that these things are taken care of and treated properly. It’s really hard to give them away.”

In addition to countless letters and drawings from all over the country, the items include a 6-foot-diameter wreath decorated with dozens of small, white teddy bears, each bearing a message to a firefighter; booties that a mother and daughter made for ground-zero rescue dogs; a U.S. flag made of paper and $1 bills. Some items came from overseas, such as origami cranes from Japan, a flag signed by residents of Italy and a banner from Pakistan.

Hoggard, a Delta flight attendant, was in Paris during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She is also a photographer, so upon returning to the U.S., she went to ground zero to take pictures and absorb what had happened.

By November, she was volunteering at a Salvation Army tent. As children’s letters arrived, she pinned them up for rescue workers to see.

“A firefighter would read them, and chuckle, or smile, or feel like, for two seconds, that things were going to be OK,” she says.

Firefighters told her they had stacks of such mail that eventually would have to be thrown away.

Hoggard didn’t want that to happen, so early in 2002 she began visiting firehouses, collecting the material and shipping it to Cincinnati. For a time, she stored it in her Oakley home, until securing free storage space from several businesses.

While making the rounds of firehouses, she met firefighter Joe Tisbe, whose station — Engine 40, Truck 35 — lost 12 people on Sept. 11.

“It was a very dark time for us,” he says. “Emotionally, mentally. It was physically draining. And to see that kind of support, to see the letters kids had written, was a bright spot.”

He, too, believes it’s important to keep the materials.

“It’s like saving your kid’s first painting,” he says. “It means a lot more than the paper and ink that’s there. It’s the emotion that’s involved in it.”

Hoggard hoped to raise enough money to display the materials in a traveling exhibit.

That never happened, but portions of the collection were shown in 2006 at Cincinnati Museum Center and at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. In 2005, Crestview Presbyterian Church in West Chester Township displayed some items.

But she could never find a permanent home. She contacted museums, foundations and politicians, to no avail.

“It was frustrating,” she says.

Two years ago, through a friend of a friend, she learned of the proposed Sept. 11 memorial and museum. The memorial is scheduled to open Sept. 11, 2011, and the permanent museum exhibition in fall 2012.

Hoggard contacted the museum, and officials flew to Cincinnati to view her collection. Soon they were working with her on a transfer of materials.

Hoggard says she proceeded slowly and cautiously. She wanted to make sure the collection was going to a good home.

Money was not an issue. Hoggard has never made a dime for her efforts.

Amy McEwen, collections manager and registrar for the memorial and museum, arrived in town Monday. She says museum officials are “very, very excited to be receiving this collection.”

“The fact that it was done by children and was such an immediate outpouring of love and faith and hope, it just takes your breath away.

“Look at this,” McEwen says, opening an 18-gallon storage bin, one of 80 that Hoggard filled. “I adore this book.” It was written and illustrated by a fifth-grade class in Gloversville, NY.

“America is freedom for all people,” says a page that shows people standing in a lush, green field.

The following pages spell out other virtues: America is friendship. America is happiness. America is caring for each other.

“What’s wonderful about this collection is seeing the hope expressed by the children that things will get better,” McEwen says. “They expressed love for the firefighters, love for each other.”

Hoggard calls it the Dear Hero collection, because that was the salutation on many of the children’s letters.

That will also be the title in the museum exhibition.

On Tuesday, as the movers packed up, Hoggard snapped photos.

Letting go is difficult, she acknowledged.

“I feel like [the museum] can do more with it than I can, having it sit here. The whole point is to have people see it.”

And to see it is to be moved, like so many rescue workers were, by the heartfelt expressions of children.