Our assignment for the writing group this month is to describe a favorite possession or object by using your five senses, sight, smell, sound, touch and taste. Well, I tried to come up with something, but I really have too many things to focus on not just one. So I decided to go with another option and that is to recollect a favorite memory from a time in your life.
I wrote this back when Rob and I first got married, in 1980.
It was one of several trips to a place I truly loved and obsessed about, an old immigration station called Ellis Island.
From the first time I saw the island, from the deck of the Staten Island ferry in 1972, I was in awe of it. The island was a mess and in complete ruin, but that didn’t seem to matter; not to me anyway. Something was pulling me there; I didn’t know what and that it was important for me to find out.
Sadly, I never did.
It’s been a long time since we’ve been there. The last time was right after Ellis opened, beautifully redone and completely restored to its original splendor. The contagious disease hospital on the other side of the island, as I understand it, has not. I know that they cleaned it up some from when we first took our three hour tour in 1980. Much of the rubble that I describe in the piece is gone, but some still does exist.
But there is something that still draws there, even if it is in printed story form. A book by Susan Meissner titled, "'A Fall of Marigolds'', is one such item. The story takes place in NYC in two different time periods: 2001 and 1911 and covers two different tragedies, the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11 and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire on March 25, 1911. Connecting these two time periods is a lovely scarf with a beautiful design of flowers in what is described as a “fall of marigolds”. What really attracted me to the book was that some of it takes place in Ellis Island where a nurse, Clara Wood by name, lives and works in the NYC of 1911.
And so that is my introduction to a piece I wrote for a writing class I was taking at the time. I guess you can say that it is one of the favorite memories. And so here it is, enjoy.
The Ghost of Ellis Island
I was standing on the deck of the Staten Island ferry when I first saw Ellis Island in 1972. Immigrants from many countries had come through here. During the peak years of immigration, 1898 to 1924, the island was at its busiest. In later years, mass immigration had dropped and there was no need for a processing station. Ellis Island closed down in 1954 and was abandoned.
By 1972, it was starting to show its age. Time had turned the shiny brown copper trim on the main building to green. Weeds, fallen branches, and debris covered the lawn. A sign standing amid the ruins said that Ellis Island had become a part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument on May 11, 1965. It was to open sometime in the future. As we passed, I could not take my eyes off it. I felt as if someone or something was calling me there.
I found myself wondering how it felt to be an immigrant, to walk the halls of that majestic brick building on my way to a strange new land. In May 1976, when the island opened officially, I heard that voice again. Since then, I have been back seven times, five times before the renovation and reconstruction and twice after it reopened in 1990.
The trip we made in 1980 was my favorite. My husband secured a reservation with the National Park Service for what was known as a three-hour photographer's tour. My husband, his friend and I put on hard hats and set off to see what we could see. We had the entire island to ourselves and we had access to places that we could not visit on the usual one hour guided tour.
Our first stop was the main building. We found some suitcases, an old baggage cart, and an old hat and used them as props. The photographs we took look as though someone we knew had just landed there and we were helping him with his bags.
The Great Hall or Registry Room, where millions of immigrants passed through medical and legal examinations, lay in ruins. Although scaffolding had gone up, paint was peeling everywhere. Staring down at me from the balcony wall was a large gaping hole.
The stairs on the far side of the hall led up to the balcony where the medical examination rooms were. One room was set up with lab equipment, medical cabinets, and crutches. A lab coat hung from the side of an old wheelchair and looked as if the doctor had gone on break and would return any moment to find his patient waiting for him.
We passed many more ruined rooms. One of the rooms held a wooden bench with only one arm. It stood all alone amid piles of plaster and paint peelings. A yellowed newspaper lay atop its seat as if someone had just finished reading it and had left it there to be discarded.
In the hallway, I caught sight of a ruined stairway, plaster and paint crumbling on each step where immigrants once walked. An old chair with a coat draped over the top stood at the foot of the stairs. It looked as though its wearer had laid it there and would soon return to pick it up.
Our trip took us to the Railroad Ticket Office where immigrants waited anxious hours for a train to bring them to the United States. Nearby, the table in the cafeteria was set for a meal. The sign on the wall read in five different languages "Deposit trays and dishes here." Inside a crumbling stairwell was a window sill carved with many immigrant names and words, each of them written in a different language.
The most frightening part of our tour was the main and contagious disease hospitals on the other side of the island. Thousands of immigrants were held here while waiting for a more thorough medical examination. When I first entered, an eerie feeling came over me. It did not look or feel like a hospital at all. Doors stood open to empty medical wards. Rusty bedpans and washbowls lay among more crumbled heaps of paint and plaster. There were broken windows everywhere.
When it was time to leave, no one wanted to go. On the ferry ride back, we sat in silence as we watched the island get smaller and smaller in the distance.
Today, a partially restored Ellis Island stands as a monument to all immigrants who entered the United States. The Great Hall looks as it did during peak immigration and it is absolutely breathtaking. The exhibits are educational and informative and are worth a trip.
Although the walls are intact and the paint is no longer peeling, something is missing. There is no longer access to the ruins, although they still exist. Most of the objects we photographed in 1980 are now behind a large glass wall in an exhibit called "Silent Voices." A food court and souvenir shop stand in places where immigrants once walked and talked of a future in the New Land.
However, something still calls me there. I do not know what or who it is. Now when we visit the island, we try to find some part that has not yet been restored. We always manage to discover something. Maybe one day, I will find the ghost who calls me there.
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