[Reader-list] Erasing Signatures From History

[Jeebesh]

There is something poignant and absurd in this report. it may unravel  
in discussion. warmly jeebesh


MARCH 2, 2011
Erasing Signatures From History
By JEFFREY ZASLOW
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703409904576174300274052230.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_sections_lifestyle
In his 35 years as a high school English teacher in suburban  
Philadelphia, Thom Williams often encouraged his students to splash  
their most creative thoughts on the walls of his classroom.

Hundreds of students embraced his invitation, covering those painted  
cinderblocks with original art, quotes from favorite books, and deep  
thoughts born from teenaged angst.

"I looked to those walls for inspiration," says 18-year-old Lauren  
Silvestri, a student of Mr. Williams's at Marple Newtown High School  
in Newtown Square, Pa. Before graduating last year, she signed her  
name and a quote she loves. "It felt good to know I'd come back  
someday and my words on the wall would be there."

Her words won't remain for long, however. Mr. Williams died of cancer  
in December at age 63, and now the school is being renovated. That  
classroom's walls are set to be demolished or painted over. "Thom was  
a free spirit who encouraged his students to be free spirits," says  
Raymond McFall, the school's principal. Still, "I can't have everybody  
painting on the walls of the school."

It is a human impulse to want to sign our names or scribble comments  
on the walls of places that have meaning for us—from the Berlin Wall  
to the walls of Graceland to the paneling in favorite bars. By  
tradition, actors sign their names backstage in theaters where they've  
performed. Soldiers scratch their marks in barracks before heading  
overseas. Athletes scribble their names and jersey numbers in  
clubhouses.

These messages left behind can feel sacred. Especially in our digital  
age, when signing someone's Facebook "wall" feels so transitory,  
there's something alluring about markings with more permanence. But  
what happens when the buildings that house old autographs must be  
razed, or new owners want the walls painted over, or school principals  
worry about the fine line between creativity and graffiti?

It's a delicate question, and many people these days are answering it  
passionately—by rallying to save the signatures.

About 2,000 people signed the walls of the Italian House Restaurant in  
Janesville, Wis., over the past quarter-century. But in 2008, the  
restaurant announced it was relocating to a building with more glass  
than solid walls. After word spread that the signatures would be  
thrown away, radio hosts in Janesville took to the airwaves to  
strategize with listeners about ways to retain them. Suggestions  
included laminating the 35 fake-brick panels of signatures onto  
tabletops at the new restaurant.

"I saw that people felt an emotional bond with those walls," says  
Edmund Halabi, the restaurant's owner, who found space to display 600  
signatures at his new location.

In the building that housed the Air Force ROTC at the University of  
Texas at Austin, visiting former prisoners of war from World War II  
and the Vietnam War were asked to sign a special wall on the third  
floor. Last year, after the building was scheduled to be demolished,  
ROTC cadets vowed to save the signatures. That required slicing a 900- 
pound chunk of the exterior wall, and using a crane to maneuver the  
slab three stories to the ground. It will be imbedded in the drywall  
of the new ROTC building.

"Preserving the autographs is part of our promise to all former POWs  
and those missing in action," says Col. Christopher Bowman, the unit's  
commanding officer. "We won't forget them."

Civil War soldiers often signed their names at mustering sites before  
heading off to fight. Countless signatures have been painted over. But  
on a plaster wall at the courthouse in Gates County, N.C., you can  
still see signatures dated June 12, 1861. One signer was 18-year-old  
John Gatling, who survived the war and returned to the courthouse in  
1915, at age 72, to speak at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary  
of the war's conclusion.

"Those signatures are a momentary record, captured in time," says Josh  
Howard, research historian with the North Carolina Office of Archives  
and History. "If you touch their names, you're literally touching  
history."

Some preservationists have come to see graffiti as a reminder of the  
human spirit. At New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 82-foot- 
long Egyptian Temple of Dendur dates to 15 B.C. From 10 B.C. to the  
mid-1800s, about 100 people—Arab passersby, British explorers, Italian  
tourists—carved their names on the temple.

"We can't take it off. It's part of the temple's history," says  
Dorothea Arnold, chairwoman of the Met's Department of Egyptian Art.

People who sign their names—whether at ancient temples or in wet  
cement on their back patios—are looking for a measure of immortality.  
But they can't assume their signatures will outlast them.

Joey Lawrence, 76, is now facing this reality.

Starting in 1965, Mr. Lawrence asked every person who entered his home  
in Hampton, Va., to sign the white-plaster wall in his sitting room. A  
retired shipyard supervisor, he has collected more than 1,000  
signatures—from friends, TV repairmen, plumbers, even Jehovah's  
Witnesses who knocked on his door. "Some were friends who are now  
dead, and others were just here for a moment, like the postman or  
newspaper boy. But all of them were part of my life," he says.

When pro athletes came to town for appearances, Mr. Lawrence would  
show up and ask them to drive to his house and sign. Some agreed to do  
it, including baseball stars Brooks Robinson in 1982 and Bob Feller in  
1986.

Neighborhood kids would stop by asking to add their names. Some have  
returned decades later to revisit their signatures.

As Mr. Lawrence ages, he's aware that someday he'll die and the house  
will be sold. He may instruct his heirs to lower the asking price if  
buyers agree to keep the signatures.

Mr. Williams, the English teacher who died, knew his students'  
heartfelt wall musings would not last forever. He had arrived at the  
school in 1974 as a bearded, long-haired 27-year-old, helping kids  
find meaning in Shakespeare and the Beatles. He taught them haiku—the  
perfect short poetry for wall graffiti.

Inspired, 600 of his students filled his walls with Hamlet  
soliloquies, Beatles lyrics and their own haiku.

On his last day as a teacher, much older, with a white beard, Mr.  
Williams finally signed the wall himself. "Go to your destiny," he  
wrote. "Goodbye."

Since his death, former students have made a pilgrimage to the  
classroom to visit their markings and pay their respects. They say  
that room was their sanctuary.

In 2007, her senior year, Laura Kopervos had scrawled an Albert Camus  
quote under a window in the classroom: "In the depths of winter, I  
finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

She'd often look out that window on ugly winter days, contemplating  
those words. Understandably, she's sorry that her quote may soon be  
gone. "But it's OK," she says. "If it's painted over, I'm going to  
write it somewhere else."