1,000 bags of ‘rage, sadness, and fear’ – and hope: Days before ‘The Earth Cried Out,’ meet the man behind 9/11’s Alki luminarias

(September 2001 photo by David Hutchinson)
By Clay Eals
Special to West Seattle Blog

A dozen years later, Dean Keppler reels at the memory. His eyes well up. His voice chokes as he talks haltingly, reverently, and, in the end, almost dazedly in trying to describe the indescribable.

“It all just happened,” he says, over and over, through tears.

Keppler is standing in the second-floor workroom of the Southwest Seattle Historical Society‘s Log House Museum. He combs through hundreds of an estimated 1,000 brown-paper bags on which people from all over West Seattle and beyond inscribed messages of sadness, anger, fear and hope.

The trigger for these emotional expressions, of course, was the terrorist attack on Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, 2001, that came to be known as 9/11. The inscribers were countless men, women, and children who for five days following the tragedy gathered beneath the Statue of Liberty replica on Alki Beach.

And the catalyst for the heartfelt messages was Keppler.

(Southwest Seattle Historical Society video)
Keppler will be among four who will speak briefly at a 9/11 memorial event, “The Earth Cried Out,” at 6:30 pm next Sunday (September 8th), at Alki Arts, 2820 Alki Ave. SW, two blocks west of the Statue of Liberty replica.

Organized by SWSHS, the free event also will feature reflections by King County Executive Dow Constantine, Seattle City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen and King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert.

The focus of the event, however, will not be the speeches.

Rather, it will be the opportunity to experience – for the first time in 12 years, and for one night only – the emotions preserved on the 1,000 bags. Each bag in the days after 9/11 encased beach sand and a tiny candle, and at night became part of a seemingly endless river of luminarias that stretched the length of the Alki promenade.

The historical society had preserved several of the bags along with toy fire trucks, police hats, and many more mementos left at the statue after 9/11. These items were the subject of a Log House Museum exhibit in 2002 and a 10th-anniversary event at the statue in 2011. But the full collection of 1,000 bags became available only this year.

In colored pens, the handwritten messages on the bags emitted rage: “You can hide, you cowards, but we will find you.”“The slaughter of innocents cannot, must not be forgiven.”

They also spoke of hope: “You will always be in our hearts.”“I will love one another.”“We have really only one thing in common: freedom to believe what we want, in peace.”

How the messages emerged is a story of spontaneity.

Like most everyone watching the attack unfold on TV on the morning of 9/11, Keppler, 31 at the time and a resident of Alki, found that “the whole world came to a screeching halt.” He thought of friends in New York, where he had attended college, and in Washington, D.C.

A traveling salesman, Keppler also soon learned that an imminent work trip was off because an East Coast flight was canceled. The morning after 9/11, he didn’t turn on his TV.

“I couldn’t stand sitting in the house, and I went for a walk to the statue,” he says. “A good number of people were there, standing around, praying and singing. There was a young guy handing out candles, and several people were saying that we should make luminarias.”

So Keppler drove to Admiral Safeway, where he bought a bag of tea-light candles and a packet of bags. He came home, grabbed an art box of colored pens and a card table, trooped to the statue and started making the bags available to passers-by.

At first, he asked people to put a name on a bag and to light a candle in someone’s honor. Then a mom told him, “Oh, I wish my kids could color.” Then someone else said, “What if we don’t know anyone?” Keppler replied, “Then you can write whatever you want.”

The writing and coloring began, and the feelings flowed.

“It clearly was something that clicked,” Keppler says. “It just worked and was very organic.”

Speedily, his supply of candles and bags dwindled. From an IKEA catalog, he had seen the concept of lighting a pathway, and a broader vision took root. He thought, “Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a million tea lights?”

He hopped back in his car, drove to IKEA in Tukwila to buy a larger supply of tea-light candles and returned to Safeway for more bags. “By 4 o’clock on Sept. 12, I was back at the statue and was set up for good.”

People kept stopping by. One by one, each wrote on a bag, added sand and a candle and placed the resulting luminaria on the bulkhead. Some asked to be honorary candle-lighters and returned at sunset to join Keppler in lighting the candles – and the line of lights grew.

Some people spelled Keppler for restroom breaks. Some came by periodically to check on the progress of the display.

“People would be at the table again and again and wanted to talk,” he says, “but some just couldn’t speak. They did their bag and moved on, and you’d never see them again.”

By Thursday, Keppler had a restocking routine: driving to Safeway and IKEA before heading back to the beach. “Each morning, I walked the bulkhead to replace the candles that had burned down,” he says. “We went through a lot of Bic Stic lighters.”

He also used a canning kettle to collect donations to the American Red Cross, which in the course of five days totaled $2,000.

Eventually, the luminarias stretched the length of the bulkhead and circled back inside the promenade to the statue. A few people returned to take their bags, but most left them.

“It was glorious to see that long, long line of natural light,” Keppler says.

The highlight was Sunday, Sept. 16, the final night, he says. “The ferries flashed their lights, and people on the ferries waved to us,” he says. “It was so bright. You could not not see it.”

As memorable for Keppler as those five days were, in the years to come he could not bear to re-live them. The bags – eight giant IKEA bags full – he eventually stored out of sight at a friend’s house.

“I didn’t know what to do with them,” he says. “I couldn’t bring myself to do anything with them. I didn’t want to profit from them or exploit them.”

He moved to Capitol Hill in 2003. In recent years, he has helped his parents operate a jewelry store in Monroe.

Last February, Keppler’s friend, Alki resident Hudson Burke, donated the bags to the Southwest Seattle Historical Society, with the consent of Keppler, who finally warmed to reconnecting with his 9/11 experience on Alki.

“I grew so much during that week,” he says, as tears form in his eyes. “It was being able, in every moment, to be in front of someone and have it not be about me. I felt like I was helping. If you feel you are helping someone else, you don’t have to worry about what you’re feeling.”

Now 43, Keppler finds that time has deepened his insights about the messages on the bags.

“It was just everyone,” he says. “There was rage, sadness and fear, and I’m so grateful that this opportunity created itself so that we weren’t all just sitting and waiting for the world to end.”

“There was something very sacred about coming to the Statue of Liberty (replica) and feeling that connection. It was very community-driven, community-maintained, community-supported. It was pure. It was group healing. It was all about doing what anyone could do in the point of their grief and fear. It brought out people’s willingness to believe in the best of each other.

“I could witness and facilitate. I just let them feel something by coloring on a bag.

“I like to think of Alki Point as our Manhattan. It should be our hallowed space for feeling something sacred. This is where the settlers came to make a better world. If we can’t do that where the boats first landed, then … ?”

And once again, Keppler begins to cry.

[Clay Eals, who was editor of the West Side Story history book, is executive director of the Southwest Seattle Historical Society.]

7 Replies to "1,000 bags of 'rage, sadness, and fear' - and hope: Days before 'The Earth Cried Out,' meet the man behind 9/11's Alki luminarias"

  • RG September 2, 2013 (1:10 pm)

    Thank you Mr. Eals. Thank you community.

  • Christopher Boffoli September 2, 2013 (1:44 pm)

    One of the under-reported aspects of living in New York City during that time is how quiet and peaceful the city became in the days after the attack. Air traffic was stopped. Bridges and tunnels were barricaded, as was lower Manhattan from 14th Street south. Broadway went dark. American flags miraculously unfurled from windows and fire escapes. And at night people gathered at various places – including in Union Square just a couple of blocks from my apartment – by the light of votive candles. Color Xeroxed missing person fliers were posted to just about every light pole and utility box in the city, with the names, pictures and WTC office floor of lost loved ones that would never be found. The weather was perfect and with no traffic downtown people were free to bike and walk in the streets. Many of us were off work as our office buildings had been closed for the week. I think many of us who witnessed firsthand the events of that day needed the time to process what had just happened. But those following days also demonstrated how in rare moments a large city like New York can feel like a small community. It showed me how horrible events can still have a richness of experience in themselves.

  • sc September 2, 2013 (2:03 pm)

    “When through one man a little more love and goodness, a little more light and truth come into the world, then that man’s life has meaning.”
    Alfred Delp

  • miws September 2, 2013 (2:21 pm)

    Thank you, Dean, Clay, and WSB, for sharing this.

    .

    Mike

  • Alice September 2, 2013 (2:35 pm)

    This is beautifully written, and a great tribute, thank you Dean, Clay and WSB.
    I missed this display because I was not here in ’01, I was over there.
    I still shudder and look over my shoulder.

    @Christopher – yes, those newspaper-printed full-page flags posted in every window and every car. And the silence in the sky was so odd.

  • G September 2, 2013 (4:39 pm)

    Thanks from Los Angeles, Dean.

  • JayDee September 2, 2013 (6:41 pm)

    I was literally stuck in Bakersfield, working, when I saw the attack happen on the TV in the morning before going to the jobsite. I had to go to work and do what we had to do. It was weird not having jets in the air, just fighters flying at 30K feet. By the time I got back home a week or so later others had appropriated the memorial for their own causes.

    I am glad to hear the back story of how one person made a difference. Thanks to Dean for the better and more uplifting story.

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